September 26

"It is in pardoning that we are pardoned."

Saint Francis of Assisi
(09/26/1181 – 10/03/1226)
Umbrian saint
(died near his birthday)

"God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender;
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all—that's quite another thing."

John Byrom
(02/29/1692 – 09/26/1763)
English writer

"All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife."

Daniel Boone
(11/02/1734 – 09/26/1820)
US explorer

"Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise."

Ivan Pavlov
(09/26/1849 – 02/27/1936)
Russian scientist

"Henry James had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it."

T. S. Eliot
(09/26/1888 – 01/04/1965)
US writer ("The Waste Land")

"The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another."

J. Frank Dobie
(09/26/1888 – 09/18/1964)
US writer ("Coronado's Children")

"Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man."

Martin Heidegger
(09/26/1889 – 05/26/1976)
German philosopher ("Sein und Zeit (Being and Time)")
(LTR with Hannah Arendt)

"One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge."

Robert Staughton Lynd
(09/26/1892 – 11/01/1970)
US sociologist ("Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture")

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini

"Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy."

Pope Paul VI
(09/26/1897 – 08/06/1978)
Italian religious leader

"Why should I limit myself to only one woman when I can have as many women as I want?"

George Gershwin
(09/26/1898 – 07/11/1937)
US composer ("Rhapsody in Blue")
(brother of Ira)

"Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a doughnut?"

Jack LaLanne
(09/26/1914 – 01/23/2011)
US exercise maven

"I didn't choose a word or anything. I just wrote the song until it stopped."

Marty Robbins
(09/26/1925 – 12/08/1982)
US singer, songwriter ("El Paso")

"Surely the vogue of those twisted and contorted human figures must be as short as it is artificial."

Harriet Monroe
(12/23/1860 – 09/26/1936)
US poet ("Dance of the Seasons") , on the work of Henri Matisse

"I ain't good-lookin', but I'm somebody's angel child."

Bessie Smith
(04/15/1894 – 09/26/1937)
US singer ("Downhearted Blues")

"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away."

Walter Benjamin
(07/15/1892 – 09/26/1940)
German writer ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction")

"Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks."

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua
(09/26/1942 – 05/15/2004)
US-Chicana writer ("Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza")

"I've never been cast as a mistress. I'm the girl men marry, not the girl they have affairs with."

Mary Beth Hurt
(09/26/1946 – )
US actor ("Interiors")
(was married to William Hurt)

"The only weights I lift are my dogs."

Olivia Newton-John
(09/26/1948 – )
Australian singer, actor ("Grease")

"Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for."

Jane Smiley
(09/26/1949 – )
US writer ("A Thousand Acres")

"They found me basically dead, not breathing, with the gearshift through my chest, and of all the people I'd known and played with, David [Bowie] was the only one who came to the hospital during all that time."

Tony Sales
(09/26/1951 – )
US bassist (Utopia, Stooges, Tin Machine)
(son of Soupy Sales)

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás

"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood."

George Santayana
(12/16/1863 – 09/26/1952)
Spanish philosopher, writer ("The Realms of Being")

"My husband is the sexiest man in the world."

Linda Hamilton
(09/26/1956 – )
US actor ("Terminator 2: Judgment Day")
(was married to James Cameron)

"What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country."

Charles E. Wilson
(07/18/1890 – 09/26/1961)
US corporate president (General Motors) , largest maker of armaments during WWII

"If you're sitting in that audience ready to fight me from the very beginning, I'm going to have a hard time getting to you. But if you've got a heart at all, I'm going to get it."

Betty Carter
(05/16/1929 – 09/26/1998)
US singer ("My Favorite Things")

"I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.'"

Paul Newman
(01/26/1925 – 09/26/2008)
US actor ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid")
(was married to Joanne Woodward)

"One does not export democracy in an armored vehicle."

Jacques Chirac
(11/29/1932 – 09/26/2019)
French President (22)