William Blake (1757-1827)

This mystic poet was known for the lyrical magic of his verse illustrated by his own gravings. Who can forget his powerful imagery - "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/ in the forests of the night." From his earliest years he saw visions. It is probably best to regard them not as hallucinations but as his intense spiritual and sensory realization of the world.

Lily Tomlin

"Every day, take your one wild and precious life and fly"
(paraphrasing Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day." 1992)

Thomas Paine

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value."

Ronald Reagan

A senior Democratic senator came to the Oval Office to protest the president's position on lowering tariffs, which he believed would cause unemployment in his state, as jobs would be lost to foreign manufacturers. Reagan sighed and expressed his appreciation of the senators's concerns, but he remained firm to the cause of freer trade and the resulting ecomomic growth. The distraught senator left, saying, "I'm going out of here and doing some praying." Reagan replied, "Well, if you get a busy signal, it's me there ahead of you."
(ref: James C. Humes)

J. B. Priestly

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."

Ernie Allen

(He had bought a cup of coffee one early morning for an elderly, unshaven, dishevelled- looking stranger in the track kitchen at Churchill Downs)
"My chance encounter with John W. Galbreath (the stranger) taught me a lesson I have never forgotten. One cannot make assumptions about people based om how they look. I now strive to treat every person with dignity and respect, no matter who I think they are, and to respond to each encounter with another human being with kindness and an open mind."
(Mr. Allen is President and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)

Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516)

He was among the first to paint weather. He paid strict attention to the time of day and the weather conditions and figured out how to use paint to emphasize daylight and atmosphere. His skill at creating a moment on canvas makes him one of the leading, although often overlooked, artists of the Renaissance.

"Atheism is the superlative of self."

Marvin D. Levy (athlete/coach)

"The day a person becomes a cynic is the day he loses his youth."

Marvin D. Levy (athlete/coach)

"The day a person becomes a cynic is the day he loses his youth."

Maltbie Babcock

"A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us."

I should have mentioned that Barbara Feldon was the actress who played Agent 99, along with bumbling agent Don Adams, in the 1965 TV show "Get Smart" created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

Barbara Feldon (more about Miss Pierce)

"I soon realized she had no truck with being charming, she was only interested in us, seeing into each of us, gleaning the larval potential lurking there that she might bring to light."
"She encouraged me to recite poetry-------and her praise radiated through me like sunshine."
"She made algebra seem like magic and diagramming sentences like a game and she enthralled us with stories about 'thoroughbreds' -- children who act honorably even in the worst of circumstances."
"Every day of that blessedly phobia-free year was an adventure, and I came away owning much more of myself than I'd imagined existed."
(excerps from "If I Only Knew Then" by Charles Grodin)

Barbara Feldon

"It was a painful but importanat lesson that it's perilous to put off thanking those who have touched one's life and heart. I'll forever regret postponing the gratitude that would have brought her pleasure. It can't be fixed - I can only offer it here. Thank you Miss Pierce."
(thoughts about a teacher)

Erich Fromm

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."

England's Queen Mother

"President Reagan and Queen Elizabeth immediately clicked on Reagan's state visit to Britain in 1982. But Reagan also gained another royal admirer - the Queen Mother. At a dinner in Windsor Palace - though the two were sitting four places away from each other - they discovered they shared a mutual love of American poet Robert Service. The two began to recite "The Cremation of Sam McGee" At the end, they were almost shouting the closing refrain:
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGree."
(Ref: James C. Humes)

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us."

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Ralph Waldo Emerson said of Whitman's poem "Leaves of Grass", "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Whitman wrote free verse and celebrated common people's roll in a democracy.

Windton Churchill

"History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future."
(a tribute by Ronald Reagan)

Winston Churchill

On his visit to the White House, the great man gave this instruction to President Roosevelt's butler Alonzo Fields: "I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple glasses of scotch and soda before lunch and French champagne and 90 year old brandy before I go to sleep at night."
(from "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns Goodwin)

Queen Elizabeth

At the age of 81, she joined models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell on Monday's Vogue Magazine list of the world's most glamorous women. A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman told Reuters "It's a great compliment. She has a very practical approach to fashion and a great sense of occasion. This month she becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a diamond wedding anniversity and next month she becomes Britain's oldest ever reigning monarch." Model Agyness Deyn said "She's cool."

Helen Keller

"Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend."

Books

I have finished reading "The Nine - Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" by Jeffrey Toobin; "My Grandfather's Son - a Memoir" by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; and I'm now reading "No Ordinary Time - Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: the Home Front in World War II" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I have had many refreshed memories. These are books of history that I have lived.

The Universe

The most distant regions of the universe we can see are about 14 billion light-years away. This is the extent of the "observable universe" but the entire universe is probably much larger - it could even extend indefinitely in all directions. It has been expanding for billions of years and the rate of its expansion is increasing. Our earth is but a tiny speck in this vast panorama.

John Keats (1795-1821)

From his brief life, he bequeathed a wealth of poems rich in imagery, melody, and exquisite language. He once wrote: "I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death." He was right.

Honore de Balzac

"Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation."

Josh Billings

"There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never reaiiy happen."

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

Master of the macabre, he wrote short story masterpieces of supernatural horror like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and haunting poetry, most famously "The Raven". He married his thirteen-year old cousin and after her death at twenty-four, went down hill fast. His life was as tortured as his fiction. A gambler, a boozer, an opium user, he was found dead on a Baltimore street at the age of forty. There were four mourners at his funeral.