So she tells us

November 15, 1887 -- Poet Marianne Moore born. She wrote:

"The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best."

Truth is not always beautiful

October 31 -- John Keats was born in 1795.

"I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what?" -- Jean Cocteau.

Fellow poet and contemporary Lord Byron called Keats "that dirty little blackguard."

Irish poet Dylan Thomas was born on this day in 1914. He died at age 39, of acute alcohol poisoning. He once wrote:

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do."

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.

To be something else than everyone else

Poet e. e. cummings, he of the no-punctuation-marks/no-capitalization style, died on this day in 1962. He wrote:

"To be nobody-but-myself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else..."



To learn about Cummings's last words, Visit Farewells

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."

Dust off your dancing shoes

August 22, 1893: American author and wit Dorothy Parker was born. A poem by her:

Leave for her a red young rose,
Go your way and save your pity;
She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty.



August 23, 1912: Dancer Gene Kelly born.

"Dancing? Oh, dreadful. How it is ever adopted in a civilized country I cannot find out." -- Fanny Burney.

Disguising the real issue, etc.

August 19, 1902: Poet Ogden Nash was born. Here's a verse:

They take a paper and they read the headlines,
So they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of breadlines,
And they philanthropically cure them all
By getting up a costume charity ball.



August 20, 1980: The first solo ascent of Mt. Everest was made on this date.

"Keep you down, and have breakfast while the asinine hunters after the picturesque go braying up the hill." -- Willam Makepeace Thackeray.



August 21, 1878: The American Bar Association was formed.

"Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished." -- Jeremy Bentham.

August 15-17

August 15, 1785: Thomas DeQuincey, English author and opium eater, was born. He wrote:

"The peace of nature and of the innocent creatures of God seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its spirit."



August 16, 1920: Poet Charles Bukowski was born. He wrote:

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”



August 17, 1893: Actress Mae West was born.

"All wickedness is little but to the wickedness of a woman." -- Ecclesiates.

Ants get in trouble when they take antacid

Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was born on this day in 1809. He wrote:

"What is it all but a trouble of ants
In the gleam of a million million of suns?"

Where's everybody going?

Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792. He wrote:

The rapid, blind
And fleeting generations of mankind.

Today is World Environment Day!

"Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the swallow speared by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey."

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Or a noisy headache in a long street

English poet (and onetime Poet Laureate) John Masefield was born on this day in 1878. He wrote:

"Life is a long headache in a noisy street."

They sometimes make me sick when I eat them, though

Poet Walt Whitman was born on this day in 1819.

"Animals do not make me sick discussing their duty to God," Whitman wrote.

Death cured him

English poet Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688. He was the greatest poet of the 18th century and is one of the most-quoted writers ever. ("A little learning's a dangerous thing;" "An honest man's the noblest work of God;" "The proper study of Mankind is Man").

Pope was afflicted with a type of tuberculosis that affected his spine -- he never grew past 4' 6", and was a hunchback -- and which ended his life at the age of 56. Here is how he summed things up:

"This long disease, my life."

The sweet smell turns rancid

Emily Dickinson died on this day in 1886. She wrote:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.

For more on Emily Dickinson, visit Farewells

And nobody's pleased with sour grapes

Birthday of American poet Rod McKuen, born in 1933.

“People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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?

So if they're booing, wear dirt earplugs

English poet A. E. Housman was born on this day in 1859.

"Eyes the shady night have shut
Cannot see the record cut;
And silence is no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears."

-- To An Athlete Dying Young.

While we're on the subject of not hearing, Beethoven died on this day