Philosophers, poets, playwrights and other putzes

October 18, 1785 -- English poet and novelist Thomas Love Peacock was born. He wrote:

"Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent."



October 17, 1938 -- Daredevil Evel Knievel was born in 1938.

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." -- H. L. Mencken.



October 16, 1888 -- Playwright Eugene O'Neill was born. He wrote:

"I sometimes think that the United States...is the greatest failure the world has ever seen."




October 15, 1844 -- Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born.

"(He was) an agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur." -- Leo Tolstoy.

And we're making history right now

The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was born on this day in 1828. He wrote:

"History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names."

The bad of Avon

Birthday (open to debate) of William Shakespeare, born in 1564. He also died on April 23, in 1616.

Most people consider him the greatest writer who ever lived, but here is what one fellow writer, Leo Tolstoy, thought of him:

"Crude, immoral, vulgar, and senseless."

For more on Shakespeare, visit Shakespeare's death

What about the meaningless absurdity of Dr. Phil?

Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist (War and Peace), died on this day in 1910. Near the end of his life he wrote:

"The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man."

Today's Perverse Verse:

If you think life's absurd,
You may not have heard
There's another one waiting,
Even more excruciating.
If you long for -- at long last -- death,
Save your breath.

To read about Tolstoy on death, visit farewells.blogspot.com.