Not at the same time, however

French author and existentialist Albert Camus was born on this day in 1913. He said:

"A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers."

Brotherhood of the bewildered

October 25, 1881 -- Pablo Picasso born.

"Abstract art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered." -- Al Capp.

October 24 -- U. N. Day.

"Civilized man is born, lives and dies in slavery; at his birth he is confined in swaddling clothes; at death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he retains the human form he is fettered by our institutions." -- Jean-Jacques Rouusseau.

Education makes the man

October 21, 1833 -- Alfred Nobel (pictured) was born. He invented dynamite, and established the Nobel Prize.

"Prizes bring bad luck...They encourage hypocrisy." -- Charles Baudelaire.

October 20, 1859 -- American educator John Dewey was born.

"Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent." -- John Maynard Keynes.

October 19, 1685 -- English physician and author Sir Thomas Browne was born. He wrote:

"Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave."

And then he dies

September 21 -- Author H. G. Wells was born Sept. 21, 1866. He wrote:

"Man is a brute...a blind prey to impulses...victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a burden, and fill his life with barren toil and trouble."

Or a grain of sand between a baboon's toes

Writer and poet (and father of the Supreme Court justice of the same name) Oliver Wendell Holmes was born on this day in 1809. He wrote:

"I see no reason for attributing to man a significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."



Yesterday was the birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greastest German writer of all. He was born August 28, 1749. He wrote:

"Man errs, 'til his strife is over."

He's nuts, I should hope

First use of the atom bomb on this day in 1945.

"Cursed is every one who placeth his hope in man." -- St. Augustine.

Get ready for the Dog Days!

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man." -- Mark Twain.

Moon of the Day

Man landed on the moon on this day in 1969.

"The sun and the moon and the stars would have long ago disappeared...had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands." -- Havelock Ellis.

He was no Prince himself

Machiavelli, Italian statesman and writer, was born on this day in 1469.

"Speaking generally," he wrote, "men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful of danger and covetous of gain."

At least he's consistent

Mark Twain died on this day in 1910.

"All the talk about tolerance, in anything or anywhere, is plainly a gentle lie," Twain wrote. "It does not exist. "It is in no man's heart; but it unconsciously, and by moss-grown inherited habit, drivels and slobbers from all men's lips.

"Intolerance is everything for oneself, and nothing for the other person. The mainspring of man's nature is just that — selfishness.

"Let us skip the other lies, for brevity's sake. To consider them would prove nothing, except that man is what he is — loving toward his own, lovable to his own — his family, his friends — and otherwise the buzzing, busy, trivial enemy of his race — who tarries his little day, does his little dirt, commends himself to God, and then goes out into the darkness, to return no more, and send no messages back — selfish even in death.



For more about Twain's death, visit Farewells

Words worth heeding

Poet William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. He wrote:

"Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

Nevermore

Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, born in 1809.

"The play is the tragedy, ‘Man’," Poe wrote, "and its hero the Conqueror Worm."

Poe was born in Boston, where his itinerant actor parents were performing. Three years later he was orphaned.

Edgar married his 13-year-old, tubercular cousin, Virginia Clemm. (They may have been married a year earlier, when she was 12.)

Baudelaire’s translations of Poe’s works made him more popular in France than the U. S. Unable to find or hold work because of his drinking, Poe nearly starved to death. Following the death of Virginia, he attempted suicide.

Poe died at 40, after a violent bout of drinking left him delirious. His last words were "Lord, help my poor soul."

His epitaph reads: "Quoth the Raven nevermore."

Today’s Perverse verse:

Poe, with his outlook macabre,
Could never hold a real job.
His poems, stories and stuff
Never made him enough.
No one wanted to read
Of becoming worm feed.

That's cold, man. And hard.

Winter begins today.

"Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man." -- Victor Hugo.

Like something stuck to your shoe?

W. S. Gilbert, the English librettist who was one-half of Gilbert and Sullivan, was born today in 1836. He wrote:

"Man is nature's sole mistake."