Or even every once in a while

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was born on this day in 1804. He said:

"It destroys one's nerves to be amiable to the same human being every day."

America, love it or lump it

September 25 is American Indian Day.

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization." -- Georges Clemenceau.

September 26: Poet T. S. Eliot was born Sept. 26, 1880. He wrote:

"Human kind cannot bear very much reality."




September 27: American Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Adams was born Sep. 27, 1722.

"The 100-percent American is 99 percent an idiot." -- George Bernard Shaw.

On September 28, 1841, Georges Clemenceau himself (see above) was born. He was a French statesman. Another French statesman, Charles DeGaulle, had this to say a century later, though not apropos of Clemenceau:

"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him."

Creeping along on all fours

The first commercial around-the-world flight began on this day in 1947. And on this day in 1972, the Watergate scandal was uncovered.

"The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded." -- Gustave Flaubert.

I resist that statement

Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government was published on this day in 1849.

"There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action." -- Bertrand Russell.

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."

And writers, too, no doubt

English author Evelyn Waugh died on this day in 1966.

"If politicians and scientists were lazier," Waugh wrote, "how much happier we should all be."

For more on Waugh, visit Today in Farewells