Finds
- Jean Piaget on the Adult in Every Child From The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932)
- No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood Credited to Ruskin and to Douglas Adams; actually Sydney J. Harris
- Cormac McCarthy on Shaping the World to Our Convenience From Cities of the Plain, closing the Border Trilogy
- Be like a headland Marcus Aurelius, in Meditations, on why bearing hardship valiantly is itself a form of good luck.
- The books nobody reads Mark Twain, in an 1906 letter to General Frederick D. Grant, on why lecture audiences never notice he's repeating himself.
- Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor From his 2008 novel Little Brother, not a stray aphorism
- The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man Confirmed: from her 1965 novel The Red and the Green
- Wole Soyinka on silence A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today, on his birthday
- Camus: "My revolt, my freedom, and my passion" Camus's three consequences of accepting absurdity — not despair but revolt, freedom, and passion. Surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on a 1945 interview.
- Arthur C. Clarke: "Stepping stones to higher things" Arthur C. Clarke on the privilege of being part of an unfinished arc — surfaced by Quote Investigator from a 1964 BBC interview.
- Hesse: "Not to know whether there is a God…is far better than to know for sure" Hesse's post-WWI letter to a young German on the corrosive role of certainty — surfaced by Maria Popova at The Marginalian.
- JFK: "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today — JFK on the prerequisite of democracy: that citizens can be trusted to evaluate ideas the state finds inconvenient.
- Juan Ramón Jiménez: "Platero stops eating and looks at me" The Spanish Nobel laureate's prose poem about a quiet exchange of attention with his donkey — surfaced by Maria Popova on tenderness as a vehicle for the eternal.
- Philipp von Jolly: "In physics, almost everything is already discovered" Quote Investigator traces the famous 'physics is finished' line — usually attributed to Lord Kelvin — to a paraphrase of Philipp von Jolly's advice to a young Max Planck.
- Judy Garland: "'Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul" Quote Investigator traces a widely-attributed Sarah Bernhardt / Mary Magdalene line to a 1939 Judy Garland poem, My Love Is Lost.
- Thoreau: "The poet's relation to his theme is the relation of lovers" Thoreau on how attention becomes love — surfaced by Maria Popova through a journal entry about 24 hours spent with a screech owl.
- William Arthur Ward: "Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think" Quote Investigator traces 'Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think.' to William Arthur Ward's 1968 compilation Thoughts of a Christian Optimist.
- Balzac: "Vocations we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed on the whole of our existence" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today (May 20) — Honoré de Balzac on the lasting cost of unchosen careers, color-bleeding through the rest of a life.
- bell hooks: "Living as we did — on the edge — we developed a particular way of seeing reality" bell hooks on the epistemic advantage of growing up at the edge — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on margins.
- Victor Borge: "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people" Quote Investigator traces the famous Borge line to a 1972 appearance — the canonical attribution holds up, surprisingly.
- Edward de Bono: "Creative thinking is a skill that can be practised and nurtured" Wikiquote's Quote of the Day (May 19) from the inventor of 'lateral thinking' — creative thinking framed as a teachable skill, not a mystical gift.
- Kundera: "We can never know what to want" Milan Kundera on the structural irreversibility of life decisions — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on ambivalence.
- George Schaller: "Her being eludes me" Conservationist George Schaller on the limit of observing a panda — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on the inner worlds of other creatures.
- Daphne du Maurier: "How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today (May 13, 2026) — Daphne du Maurier on the simplicity of a self-image-free life.
- "Do Not Confine Your Children to Your Own Learning" Quote Investigator traces a parenting line often misattributed to Tagore
- Julian of Norwich "Mercy and forgiveness leadeth us to grace" Wikiquote's Quote of the Day from Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century English anchoress whose Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest surviving book in English by a woman.
- "Nobody Notices When Things Go Right" Quote Investigator traces Zimmerman's Law of Complaints to 1978
- Whitman: "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all" Whitman's resolve in the face of Emerson's critique of Leaves of Grass — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on creative confidence.