May 27

"Disarm, disarm. The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession."

Julia Ward Howe
(05/27/1819 – 10/17/1910)
US writer ("Battle Hymn of the Republic")

"Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened."

Arnold Bennett
(05/27/1867 – 03/27/1931)
English writer ("Anna of the Five Towns")

"Dancing: The Highest Intelligence in the Freest Body."

Isadora Duncan
(05/27/1878 – 09/14/1927)
US dancer

"The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is."

Louis-Ferdinand Celine
(05/27/1894 – 07/01/1961)
French writer ("Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)")

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan."

Dashiell Hammett
(05/27/1894 – 01/10/1961)
US writer ("The Maltese Falcon")
(was married to Lillian Hellman)

"Unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."

Peter Marshall
(05/27/1902 – 01/26/1949)
Scottish-US religious leader

"In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth."

Rachel Carson
(05/27/1907 – 04/14/1964)
US writer, conservationist ("Silent Spring")

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."

Hubert H. Humphrey
(05/27/1911 – 01/13/1978)
US Vice President (38)

"'Gothic' is just a word recalling a multitude of sins!"

Vincent Price
(05/27/1911 – 10/25/1993)
US actor ("The Pit and the Pendulum")
(was married to Coral Browne)

"An ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet."

John Cheever
(05/27/1912 – 06/18/1982)
US writer ("The Wapshot Chronicle") , on Yevgeny Yevtushenko

"Lay off for three weeks, and then quit for good."

Sam Snead
(05/27/1912 – 05/23/2002)
US golfer , advice
(died near his birthday)

"Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today."

Herman Wouk
(05/27/1915 – 05/17/2019)
US writer ("The Winds of War")

"I guess the other producers must have been spending just about the same amount of money that we were, but their pictures were such sh*t."

Gene Fowler, Jr.
(05/27/1917 – 05/11/1998)
US editor, director
(son of Gene Fowler)

"There are many vampires in the world today—you only have to think of the film business."

Christopher Lee
(05/27/1922 – 06/07/2015)
English actor ("The Lord of the Rings")

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name."

Henry Kissinger
(05/27/1923 – )
US secretary of state ("Diplomacy")

"Only the wittol knows he's no cuckold."

John Barth
(05/27/1930 – )
US writer ("The Sot-Weed Factor")

"My misdeeds are accidental happenings and merely the result of having been in the wrong bar or bed at the wrong time, say most days between midday and midnight."

Jeffrey Bernard
(05/27/1932 – 09/04/1997)
English writer ("Reach for the Ground: The Downhill Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard")

"Did you ever notice, the only one in 'A Christmas Carol' with any character is Scrooge? Marley is a whiner who f890ed over the world and then hadn't the spine to pay his dues quietly; Belle, Scrooge's ex-girlfriend, deserted him when he needed her most; Bob Cratchit is a gutless toady without enough get-up-and-go to assert himself; and the less said about that little treacle-mouth, Tiny Tim, the better."

Harlan Ellison
(05/27/1934 – 06/28/2018)
US writer ("A Boy and His Dog")

"If a role isn't different, it's not worth doing."

Louis Gossett, Jr.
(05/27/1936 – )
US actor ("Enemy Mine")

"History admires the wise, but elevates the brave."

Edmund Morris
(05/27/1940 – 05/24/2019)
Kenya-born US writer ("The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt")
(died near his birthday)

"Everybody wants to see justice done, to somebody else."

Bruce Cockburn
(05/27/1945 – )
Canadian singer, songwriter ("Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws")

"My dreams are of water. And my nightmares."

Siouxsie Sioux
(05/27/1957 – )
English singer, songwriter ("Spellbound")

"Great causes and little men go ill together."

Jawaharlal Nehru
(11/14/1889 – 05/27/1964)
Indian leader ("The Discovery of India")
(father of Indira Gandhi)

"Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."

Victor Kiam
(12/07/1926 – 05/27/2001)
US sports team owner (New England Patriots)

"I play every show like it's my last. Fortunately that's never turned out to be the case."

Gregg Allman
(12/08/1947 – 05/27/2017)
US singer, songwriter ("Melissa")
(brother of Duane Allman; was married to Cher)