April 17

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne

"It seldom happens, I think, that a man has the civility to die when all the world wishes it."

Marie de Sevigne
(02/05/1626 – 04/17/1696)
French writer

"Here comes the orator with his flood of words and his drop of reason."

Benjamin Franklin
(01/17/1706 – 04/17/1790)
US writer, inventor, diplomat ("Poor Richard's Almanack")

"The proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly exploded in the air."

William Gilmore Simms
(04/17/1806 – 06/11/1870)
US writer ("The Yemassee: a romance of Carolina")

"A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one."

J. Pierpont Morgan
(04/17/1837 – 03/31/1913)
US gazillionaire

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes — ah, that is where the art resides."

Artur Schnabel
(04/17/1882 – 08/15/1951)
Austrian pianist, composer

"What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?"

Isak Dinesen
(04/17/1885 – 09/07/1962)
Danish writer ("Out of Africa")

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion."

Thornton Wilder
(04/17/1897 – 12/07/1975)
US writer ("The Bridge of San Luis Rey")

"Hell is paved with Good Samaritans."

William Holden
(04/17/1918 – 11/12/1981)
US actor ("Stalag 17")

"Bond smoked like Peter Lorre, drank like Humphrey Bogart, ate like Sydney Greenstreet, used up girls like Errol Flynn... then went to a steam bath and came out looking like Clark Gable."

Harry Reasoner
(04/17/1923 – 08/06/1991)
US telejournalist , on Ian Fleming's creation

"Madonna is the speedboat, and the rest of us are just the Go-Gos on water skis."

Liz Phair
(04/17/1967 – )
US singer, songwriter ("Whip-Smart")

"My Spanish is improving and I can now ask, 'Dónde Gucci?' ('Where is Gucci?'). I also can say, 'Tienes un Bentley?' ('Do you have a Bentley?')."

Victoria Beckham
(04/17/1974 – )
English dancer

"To appreciate present conditions, collate them with those of antiquity."

Basil Bunting
(03/01/1900 – 04/17/1985)
English writer ("Briggflatts")

"I have made my world and it is a much better world than I ever saw outside."

Louise Nevelson
(09/23/1899 – 04/17/1988)
Russian artist ("Clown tight rope walker")

"I'm sick and tired of black and white people of good intent giving aspirin to a society that is dying of a cancerous disease."

Ralph Abernathy
(03/11/1926 – 04/17/1990)
US clergyman, activist ("And the Walls Came Tumbling Down")

"The universe may
be as great as they say.
But it wouldn't be missed
if it didn't exist."

Piet Hein
(12/16/1905 – 04/17/1996)
Danish inventor ("Grooks")

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian."

Linda Eastman McCartney
(09/24/1941 – 04/17/1998)
US photographer ("Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era")
(was married to Paul McCartney)

"I like to write a lot of satire."

Earl King
(02/07/1934 – 04/17/2003)
US singer, guitarist, songwriter ("Come On")

"The weakness of most men
they do not know how to become a stone or tree."

Aimé Césaire
(06/26/1913 – 04/17/2008)
Martinique writer ("Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism)")

"Injections are the best thing ever invented for feeding doctors."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(03/06/1927 – 04/17/2014)
Colombian writer ("Love in the Time of Cholera")

"I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up."

Barbara Bush
(06/08/1925 – 04/17/2018)
US first lady (48)
(wife of George Herbert Walker Bush, mother of dubya)