December 24

"Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy."

William Warburton
(12/24/1698 – 06/07/1779)
English bishop, literary critic ("The Divine Legation of Moses")

"Feed the musician, and he's out of tune."

George Crabbe
(12/24/1754 – 02/03/1832)
English writer ("The Borough")

"Journalism is literature in a hurry."

Matthew Arnold
(12/24/1822 – 04/15/1888)
English writer ("Dover Beach")

"Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat."

Lord Viscount John Morley
(12/24/1838 – 09/23/1923)
English historian ("On Compromise")

"Next to excellence is the appreciation of it."

William Makepeace Thackeray
(07/18/1811 – 12/24/1863)
India-born English writer ("Vanity Fair")

"Darling, you stink so beautiful."

Michael Curtiz
(12/24/1886 – 04/11/1962)
US film director ("Casablanca") , to a perfumed actress

"Clark Gable's ears make him look like a taxicab with both doors open."

Howard Hughes
(12/24/1905 – 04/05/1976)
US zillionaire ("Hell's Angels")
(nephew of Rupert Hughes; relationship with Katharine Hepburn)

"The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure."

I. F. Stone
(12/24/1907 – 06/18/1989)
US writer ("Underground to Palestine")

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

John Muir
(04/21/1838 – 12/24/1914)
Scottish naturalist ("A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf")

"Deep down I'm pretty superficial."

Ava Gardner
(12/24/1922 – 01/25/1990)
US actor ("The Night of the Iguana")
(was married to Frank Sinatra, Artie Shaw, Mickey Rooney)

Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins Clark Conheeney

"The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet."

Mary Higgins Clark
(12/24/1927 – 01/31/2020)
US writer ("A Stranger Is Watching")

"Never marry a man who hates his mother, because he'll end up hating you."

Jill Bennett
(12/24/1931 – 10/04/1990)
Malayan actor ("Inadmissible Evidence")
(was married to John Osborne)

"For those who missed it the first time, this is your golden opportunity; you can miss it again." *

Michael Billington
(12/24/1941 – 06/03/2005)
English actor

"It will be so dirty that if we moved in next to you, your lawn would die."

Lemmy Kilmister
(12/24/1945 – 12/28/2015)
English bassist ("Ace of Spades") , on Motörhead's music
(died near his birthday)

"I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style."

Louis Aragon
(10/03/1897 – 12/24/1982)
French writer ("Le Paysan de Paris")

"Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow."

Norman Vincent Peale
(05/31/1898 – 12/24/1993)
US theologian

"Don't clap too hard—it's a very old building."

John Osborne
(12/12/1929 – 12/24/1994)
Welsh writer ("Look Back in Anger")
(was married to Jill Bennett and died on her birthday, was also married to Penelope Gilliatt)

"In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?"

Harold Pinter
(10/10/1930 – 12/24/2008)
English writer ("The Birthday Party")