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Great quotes on family and relatives
Great quotes on family and relatives

Great quotes on family and relatives, a collection of authorial aphorisms on the fundamental core of society, even if on the whole it is not always idyllic.

A family in harmony will prosper in everything.
Chinese Proverb

There are only two families in the world, the haves and the have-nots.
Miguel De Cervantes

The family is the school of duties… founded on love.
Felix Adler

The babe at first feeds upon the mother’s bosom, but it is always on her heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

Close relatives, just like shoes, are the ones that cause the most trouble.
Carl William Brown

A writer is always unwelcome at the family table. Because we notice things. And then we use them.
Elizabeth Hardwick

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
Anthony Brandt

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances… in short, by the influence of woman, in the lofty character of wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Charles Dickens

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
James G. Frazer

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo tolstoy

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

Cruel is the strife of brothers.
Aristotle

To be generalists, we could say that we are all children of God, that is, of an unknown father.
Carl William Brown

Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world.
Susan Lieberman

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
Samuel Johnson

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
Mario Puzo

Family … the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
August Strindberg

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for? its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.
Florence Nightingale

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.
John Keats

Man is certainly an animal at least as stupid as his lower relatives, only he is also dangerously and destructively vain.
Carl William Brown

Family values are a little like family vacations -? subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.
Leslie Dreyfous

The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
Ring Lardner

So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
Haniel Long

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Count Leo Tolstoy

Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana

A mother’s love is fashioned after God’s enduring love. It is endless and unfailing like the love of Him above.
Helen Steiner Rice

I would rather start a family than finish one.
Don Marquis

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.
Margaret Mead

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
H. L. Mencken

In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.
Isaac Rosenfeld

At funerals, the dead are the ones who feel better; at least they avoid the priests’ bullshit and the relatives’ gossip.
Carl William Brown

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.
Charles M. Schulz

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A family with an old person has a living treasure of gold.
Chinese Proverb

If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Love makes a family.
Gigi Kaeser

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.
Buddha

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin Crisp

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.
Matt Groening

I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work.
Lee Iacocca

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul II

When I do something in my family because I really enjoy it, then my duty has become my pleasure. And it is a pleasure for all the people around me.
Dr. Jess Lair

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
Phyllis McGinley

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
V. S. Pritchett

God, Country, and Family, but above all Money, these are the cornerstones of hypocrisy.
Carl William Brown

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.
Susan Sontag

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Mark Twain

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar Wilde

A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can’t provide stability, I’m not saying that… It does take a father, though.
Tom Delay

Better a loving single-parent family than a ‘conventional’ family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue.
Moby

Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.
Bill clinton

If your family tree does not fork, you might be a redneck.
Jeff Foxworthy

He didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.
George Bernard Shaw

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead

The holy restricted family: A loves B, somehow, and is loved back, one way or another! Neither of them gives a damn about the rest of the alphabet!
Carl William Brown

Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone.
Neil Kurshan

Family is what grounds you.
Angelina Jolie

A close relative is one you see occasionally between family funerals.
Author Unknown

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends.
Jacques Delille

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
J. M. Synge

A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
George Ade

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
Amos Bronson Alcott

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.
Anita Baker

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

Parents: persons who spend half their time worrying how a child will turn out, and the rest of the time wondering when a child will turn in.
Ted Cook

Alternatives to marriage and the traditional family: cohabitation, communes, celibacy, vows, suicide…
Carl William Brown

The family is the nucleus of civilization.
William J. Durant

What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.
Clarissa Graves

Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender — these form the wealth of home.
Sarah J. Hale

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

A good many family trees are shady.
Robert Elliott Gonzales

The Family is the Country of the heart.
Giuseppe Mazzini

The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
Gloria Steinem

Families aren’t easy to join. They’re like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.
Erma Bombeck

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
Freya Stark

Family… the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house — fathers, and a hell for children.
August J. Strindberg

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
Martin Mull

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.
Sandra Day O’Connor

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
George Eliot

There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he’s held up by the others until he regains his footing.
Phil Mcgraw

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin Crisp

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
André Maurois

Under any system of society … the family holds the future in its bosom.
Charles Franklin Thwing

For the Kennedys, politics was a family tradition; for the Holy Family, killing them was a tradition as well.
Carl William Brown

Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
Henri-Frederic Amiel

Marriage is to family what legs are to a table.
Betty Jane Wylie

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The difference between us is that my family begins with me, whereas yours ends with you.
Author Unknown

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
Mark Twain

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.
The Holy Bible

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
Charles Swindoll

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described – and will be, after our deaths – by each of the family members who believe they know us.
Gloria Steinem

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
George Bernard Shaw

The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven’s lieutenants.
William Shakespeare

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Christina Rossetti

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.
Ronald David Laing

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.
Evan Esar

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

It seems to be almost inevitable that the man who accepts a subordinate economic position in the Family degenerates into a loafer and a tyrant.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul Ii

The family that stays together probably has only one car.
Knofel Staton

The family and the couple are by far the most disintegrating centers of false moral, intellectual, and spiritual well-being in capitalist society.
Carl William Brown

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Bernard Shaw

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
Alex Haley

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
Elizabeth Janeway

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
Charles Lamb

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family.
Clare Boothe Luce

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian… and most of all, his family ought to know.
Dwight L. Moody

A brother is a friend provided by nature.
Legouve Pere

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Eleanor Roosevelt

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

A family is a unit composed not only of children, but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
Ogden Nash

Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.
John Todd

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow…. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.
Betty Jane Wylie

Raising a family wasn’t something I put on my resumé, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?
Erma Bombeck

In one family, every little plan or question is discussed amid bickering and irritation. In another, without the least effort, every discussion goes on amid perfect peace. This is just as easy, and infinitely more agreeable: only, in many homes it does not happen to be the family habit.
Charles Buxton

The most socially subversisve institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

Children keep a family together, especially when one can’t get a babysitter.
Frederick Shepperd

Women’s liberationists spread the word that the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.
Emmett R. Tyell

My family begins with me, your family ends with you.
Author Unknown

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
Charles Wadworth

People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
Zig Ziglar

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
G. K. Chesterton

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

A large family party is rather too much like a flight of tomtits; everlasting twitter, but no conversation; gregariousness without companionship.
Charles Buxton

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
Elizabeth Janeway

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

As a single dried tree, if fired, sets a whole forest on fire, so does a bad son destroy a whole family.
Chanakya

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

I dedicate this aphorism to my relatives, just to let the world know that I had some.
Carl William Brown

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity.
E. H. Chapin

The family is an absolute monarchy in miniature.
Abraham Miller

In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each is serving the others, seeking one another’s good, and bearing one another’s burdens.
Henry Ward Beecher

Two people who know they do not understand each other, Breeding children whom they do not understand And who will never understand them.
T. S. Eliot

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
Charles Caleb Colton

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
Benjamin Franklin

Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family.
Marmontel Gretry

The many books I have at home, among other things, serve both to keep relatives away and to keep me away from them.
Carl William Brown

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson

If the family goes, so goes our civilization.
Ronald Reagan

I’m from such an old family, it’s been condemned.
Phyllis Diller

God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
Anne Enright

In houses where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame of love, there is discord at the centre, the whole household becomes hypocritical.
William Makepeace Thackeray

That was what you did with family when you’d been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they’d pissed you off, and it was okay, because no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you.
Cassandra Clare

The family was an art … and the dinner table was the place it found expression.
Don Delillo

I can’t wait to give my writing to my relatives; perhaps it will finally be a good opportunity for them to read a book.
Carl William Brown

When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
William Makepeace Thackeray

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons, ambition. But, to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to express.
Joseph Addison

Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other’s way, what a tangle.
John Updike

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other’s individual aims and aspirations.
Buzz Aldrin

The government is becoming the family of last resort.
Jerry Brown

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
Sarah Dessen

Go to friends for advice, woman for love, strangers for charity and relatives for nothing.
Spanish Proverb

What family has no mariner in its tree? No fool, no felon. No fisherman.
Cormac Mccarthy

In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife, and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.
Brahma

An advantage of poverty, your relatives gain nothing by your death.
Hebrew Proverb

Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.
Erma Bombeck

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
Andre Gide

What is family? They were the people who claimed you.
Sarah Dessen

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
Robert Frost

The rich never have to seek out their relatives.
Italian Proverb

None but a mule denies his family.
Arabian Proverb

All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.
Chinese Proverb

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish – very gently.
Chinese Proverb

In a broken nest there are few whole eggs.
Chinese Proverb

Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head.
Chinese Proverb

A small family is soon provided for.
English Proverb

A good son-in-law is like the acquisition of a new son; a bad one is like the loss of your daughter.
Jewish Proverb

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.
Jewish Proverb

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn’t good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.
Jewish Proverb

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
Jewish Proverb

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Guy Fawkes Day https://www.english-culture.com/guy-fawkes-day/ Wed, 05 Nov 2025 10:33:44 +0000 https://www.english-culture.com/?p=93393 Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain.This article talks about its origin, …

The post Guy Fawkes Day first appeared on The World of English.]]>
Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot
Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain.This article talks about its origin, celebrations, tradition and customs. Guy Fawkes Day is not a public holiday. Businesses have normal opening hours. A firework display to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night.

Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes and some friends, a group of provincial English Catholics, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder and assasinate the Protestant King James I of England and replace him with a Catholic head of state; like many people (in the past as well as now!) they didn’t like the government.

The attempt failed and Guy Fawkes was caught and arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure, in fact the parliament had said that every year on November 5th people should remember the Gunpowder Plot, that is the day when Members of Parliament were saved from a horrible death.

Within a few decades Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was known, became the predominant English state commemoration, but as it carried strong Protestant religious overtones it also became a focus for anti-Catholic sentiment. Puritans delivered sermons regarding the perceived dangers of popery, while during increasingly raucous celebrations common folk burnt effigies of popular hate-figures, such as the pope. Towards the end of the 18th century reports appear of children begging for money with effigies of Guy Fawkes and 5 November gradually became known as Guy Fawkes Day.

Towns such as Lewes and Guildford were in the 19th century scenes of increasingly violent class-based confrontations, fostering traditions those towns celebrate still, albeit peaceably. In the 1850s changing attitudes resulted in the toning down of much of the day’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in 1859. Eventually the violence was dealt with, and by the 20th century Guy Fawkes Day had become an enjoyable social commemoration, although lacking much of its original focus. The present-day Guy Fawkes Night is usually celebrated at large organised events, centred on a bonfire and extravagant firework displays.

Settlers exported Guy Fawkes Night to overseas colonies, including some in North America, where it was known as Pope Day. Those festivities died out with the onset of the American Revolution. Claims that Guy Fawkes Night was a Protestant replacement for older customs like Samhain are disputed, although another old celebration, Halloween, has lately increased in popularity, and according to some writers, may threaten the continued observance of 5 November.

The Gunpowder Plot conspirators
The Gunpowder Plot conspirators

Little is known about the earliest celebrations. In settlements such as Carlisle, Norwich and Nottingham, corporations provided music and artillery salutes. Canterbury celebrated 5 November 1607 with 106 pounds of gunpowder and 14 pounds of match, and three years later food and drink was provided for local dignitaries, as well as music, explosions and a parade by the local militia. Even less is known of how the occasion was first commemorated by the general public, although records indicate that in the Protestant stronghold of Dorchester a sermon was read, the church bells rung, and bonfires and fireworks lit.

Organised entertainments also became popular in the late 19th century, and 20th-century pyrotechnic manufacturers renamed Guy Fawkes Day as Firework Night. Sales of fireworks dwindled somewhat during the First World War, but resumed in the following peace. At the start of the Second World War celebrations were again suspended, resuming in November 1945. For many families, Guy Fawkes Night became a domestic celebration, and children often congregated on street corners, or standing outside railway stations accompanied by their own figures effigy of Guy Fawkes made of soks and straw and dressed in old clothes. Collecting money was a popular reason for their creation, the children taking their effigy from door to door, or displaying it on street corners, while saying “Penny for the guy”.

However they were mainly built to go on the bonfire, itself sometimes comprising wood stolen from other pyres; “an acceptable convention” that helped bolster another November tradition, Mischief Night. Rival gangs competed to see who could build the largest, sometimes even burning the wood collected by their opponents; in 1954 the Yorkshire Post reported on fires late in September, a situation that forced the authorities to remove latent piles of wood for safety reasons.

Lately, however, the custom of begging for a “penny for the Guy” has almost completely disappeared. In contrast, some older customs still survive; in Ottery St Mary men chase each other through the streets with lit tar barrels, and since 1679 Lewes has been the setting of some of England’s most extravagant 5 November celebrations, the Lewes Bonfire. Generally, modern 5 November celebrations are run by local charities and other organisations, with paid admission and controlled access, anyway Guy Fawkes’ Day is finally declining, having lost its connection with politics and religion. But we have heard that many times before.

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The Fifth of November

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

English Folk Verse (c.1870)

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Perhaps most widely known in America from its use in the movie V for Vendetta, versions of the above poem have been wide spread in England for centuries. They celebrate the foiling of (Catholic) Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up (Protestant controlled) England’s House of Parliament on November 5th, 1605. Known variously as Guy Fawkes Day, Gunpowder Treason Day, and Fireworks Night, the November 5th celebrations in some time periods included the burning of the Pope or Guy Fawkes in effigy. This traditional verse exists in a large number of variations and the above version has been constructed to give a flavor for the major themes that appear in them. Several of the reference books on the subject cite even earlier sources.

Guy Fawkes also inspired the mask that V wears in the movie V for Vendetta, a dystopian political thriller directed by James McTeigue and written by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the 1988 DC/Vertigo Comics that were initially a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd published in black and white as an ongoing serial in the short-lived UK anthology Warrior, and only after  morphed into a ten-issue limited series published by DC Comics.

In modern society in general, this mask has become a symbol of anarchism, revolution, and civil disobedience, for example, demonstrators in Egypt and at Occupy Wall Street in New York City wore the iconic mask to show their disapproval of the government.

Within the graphic novel, the mask is a powerful symbol: it communicates the wearer’s allegiance to the spirit of Guy Fawkes, the man who tried and failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the 16th century and his opposition to the Norsefire government that controls England. One important element of the mask’s power as a symbol is its anonymity: anyone can wear the mask and embody the spirit of rebellion.

We see this first-hand in the graphic novel, as in the final chapters, Evey Hammond dons V’s mask and “becomes” V. In the end, then, the Guy Fawkes mask represents symbols at their most powerful: they can transform individual, flawed people into something more powerful and create movements.

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Guy Fawkes story https://www.english-culture.com/guy-fawkes-story/ Tue, 04 Nov 2025 13:24:18 +0000 https://www.english-culture.com/?p=93514 Guy Fawkes story and the Gunpowder plot, an easy article for students of English that explains the origin of the story with its celebrations and customs. A desperate disease requires a dangerous …

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Guy Fawkes story
Guy Fawkes Story

Guy Fawkes story and the Gunpowder plot, an easy article for students of English that explains the origin of the story with its celebrations and customs.

A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.
Guy Fawkes

Guy Fawkes is not dead, he is living inside our minds and our souls with his ideas and our hopes.
Carl William Brown

Remember, remember, the 5th of November The Gunpowder Treason and plot; I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.
Folk song

Guy Fawkes (1570-1606), also known as Guido Fawkes, English Gunpowder plot conspirator, the only son of Edward Fawkes of York, a member of a Yorkshire family and advocate of the archbishop of York’s consistory court, was baptized at St. Michael le Belfrey at York on April 16, 1570.

His parents being Protestants, Fawkes was educated at the free school at York. Soon after his father’s death his mother remarried. Fawkes’s stepfather was connected with many Roman Catholic families and was probably a Roman Catholic himself, and Fawkes became a zealous adherent of the old faith. In 1593 he went to Flanders and enlisted in the Spanish army, assisting at the capture of Calais by the Spanish in 1596 and gaining some military reputation.

The Gunpowder Plot

In 1604 Thomas Winter, at the instance of Robert Catesby, in whose mind the Gunpowder plot had now taken definite shape, introduced himself to Fawkes in Flanders, and as a “confident gentleman,” “best able for this business,” brought him on to England as assistant in the conspiracy. Shortly afterward he was initiated into the plot, after taking an oath of secrecy, meeting Catesby, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy and John Wright at a house behind St. Clement’s.

Since he was unknown in London, and because of his exceptional courage, coolness and probably his military experience, Fawkes was entrusted with the actual accomplishment of the design; when the house adjoining the parliament house was hired in Percy’s name, he took charge of it as Percy’s servant, under the name of John Johnson.

The first meeting of the five central conspirators had took place on Sunday 20 May 1604, at an inn called the Duck and Drake, in the fashionable Strand district of London. The contemporaneous account of the prosecution (taken from Thomas Wintour’s confession) claimed that the conspirators attempted to dig a tunnel from beneath Whynniard’s house to Parliament, although this story may have been a government fabrication; no evidence for the existence of a tunnel was presented by the prosecution, and no trace of one has ever been found. He acted sentinel while the others worked at the mine in Dec. 1604, and on the discovery and hiring of the adjoining cellar, beneath the house of lords, he arranged in it the barrels of gunpowder, which he covered with firewood and coals and with iron bars to increase the force of the explosion.

The Gunpowder Plot conspirators
The Gunpowder Plot conspirators

When all was ready in May 1605, Fawkes was dispatched to Flanders to acquaint Sir William Stanley (who had betrayed the city of Deventer to the Spaniards in 1587) and the intriguer Hugh Owen with the plot. He returned in August and brought fresh gunpowder into the cellars to replace any spoiled by damp. A slow match was prepared which would give him a quarter of an hour in which to escape from the explosion. 

The plot however failed because it was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605. During a search of the House of Lords at about midnight on 4 November 1605, Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder, enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble and arrested.

Most of the conspirators fled from London when they learned of the plot’s discovery, trying to enlist support along the way. Several made a stand against the pursuing Sheriff of Worcester and his men at Holbeche House; in the ensuing battle, Catesby was one of those shot and killed. At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the survivors, including Fawkes, were convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

Fawkes behaved with the utmost fortitude when arrested. He refused stubbornly to give information concerning his accomplices on Nov. 8 he gave a narrative of the plot, but it was not till the yth when the fugitive cons irators had been taken at to his he that torture wrug from him their names. His signature to his confession of this date, in only of his Christian Name and written in a faint and trembling hand, is probably a ghastly testimony to the severity of the torture which James had ordered to be applied if he would not otherwise confess.

He was tried, together with Robert and Thomas Winter, John Grant, Ambrose Rokewood, Robert Keyes and Thomas Bates, before a special commission in Westminster hall on Jan. 27, 1606. Fawkes suffered death in company with Thomas Winter, John Grant, Ambrose Rokewood, Robert Keyes on the 31st, being drawn on a hurdle from the Tower to the parliament house, opposite which he was executed. He made a short speech on the scaffold, expressing his repentance, and mounted the ladder last and with assistance, being weak from torture and illness.

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Quotes about mobbing, power and management. https://www.english-culture.com/quotes-about-mobbing-power-and-management/ Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:32:32 +0000 https://www.english-culture.com/?p=312 Quotes about mobbing, power and management. Some ideas about power, management, school and the practice of bullying and mobbing some collegues at work place or on the Internet. There are also some …

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Quotes about mobbing
Quotes about mobbing

Quotes about mobbing, power and management. Some ideas about power, management, school and the practice of bullying and mobbing some collegues at work place or on the Internet. There are also some quotes that can suggest the ways you can protect yourself.

Be circumspect how you offend schollers, for knowe, a serpent tooth bites not so ill, as dooth a schollers angrie quill.
John Florio

St. Michael’s Shield of Truth Prayer. St. Michael, you are our defender and safeguard against evil. Place your Shield of Truth over us and defend us in the battle which Satan wages against truth. Help us to seethe righteous path of Holy Love.Clarify our choices between good and evil by placing us always behind your Shield of Truth. Amen.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I realized that bullying never has to do with you. It’s the bully who’s insecure.
Shay Mitchell

I allowed myself to be bullied because I was scared and didn’t know how to defend myself. I was bullied until I prevented a new student from being bullied. By standing up for him, I learned to stand up for myself.
Jackie Chan

Wisdom overcomes fortune.
Decimus Junius Juvenalis

Cyberbullying is poised to turn into the biggest online concern, already affecting up to 35% of all children.
Dr. Martyn Wild

Never underestimate the enemy, above all if he is a stupid one.
Carl William Brown

Once I was adviced never to trust a pretty face. Well, and what should I do when a meet a shithead?
Carl William Brown

Do not do what you would undo if caught.
Leah Arendt

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: ‘The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.’ In these words, he epitomized the history of the human race.
Bertrand Russell

Often, the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being.
Karen Mueller Coombs

If bullies actually believe that somebody loves them and believes in them, they will love themselves, they will become better people, and many will even become saviors to the bullied.
Dan Pearce

Unless and until our society recognizes cyberbullying for what it is, the suffering of thousands of silent victims will continue.
Anna Maria Chávez

Every thought we think is creating our future.
Louise L. Hay

You must try to make the most of all that comes but  also don’t forget to learn a lot of all that goes.
Carl William Brown

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King Jr

I have come to regard the law courts not as a cathedral but rather as a casino.
Richard Ingrams

Courage is the most important of virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.
Maya Angelou

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

One man can make a difference, and every man should try.
John F. Kennedy

We’re just honest working men that have been pushed so far and so hard that we can’t keep it up any longer.
Frances O’Rourke

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell

We explain when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you do not stoop to their level. Our motto is when they go low, you go high.
Michelle Obama

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell

Power is not a means; it is an end… The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
George Orwell

Nemo me impune lacessit. (No one harms me with impunity.)
Motto – Order of the Thistle

“If everyone is in agreement to condemn someone accused, release him, for he must be innocent.”.
Talmudic Principle

It isn’t the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause the rebels.
Carl Oglesby

Management doesn’t seem to understand the importance of the human factor.
King Charles III

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Albert Einstein

He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world.
Thomas Hughes

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
Elie Wiesel

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel

I would rather be a little nobody than to be an evil somebody.
Abraham Lincoln

People say sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you, but that’s not true. Words can hurt. They hurt me. Things were said to me that I still haven’t forgotten.
Demi Lovato

Cyberbullies can hide behind a mask of namelessness online and do not need direct physical admittance to their victims to do unimaginable harm.
Anna Maria Chávez

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time
when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steven Biko

If you’re insulting people on the internet, you must be ugly on the inside.
Phil Lester

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
Desmond Tutu

What if the kid you bullied at school, grew up, and turned out to be the only surgeon who could save your life?
Lynette Mather

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.
Cesar Chavez

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm

We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will.
You do your worst–and we will do our best.
Sir Winston Churchill

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with
the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
William Hazlitt

The superior person understands rightness; the inferior person understands profit.
Confucius

Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence.
Leonardo da Vinci

People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all that they get.
Frederick Douglass

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Peter Drucker

Never undervalue the enemies, especially if they are stupid. Carl William Brown

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.
Mahatma Gandhi

There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed.
Mahatma Gandhi

In the old days all you needed was a handshake. Nowadays you need forty lawyers.
Jimmy Hoffa

The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Rosa Parks

If you let a bully come in your front yard, he’ll be on your porch the next day and the day after that
he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.
Lyndon Baines Johnson

Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be
regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.
William Shakespear

“Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
William Shakespeare

All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.”
John Tillotson

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essense of inhumanity.
George Bernard Shaw

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
Seneca

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
Napoleon Hill

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott

The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
Georges Bidault

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes,
and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
Francis Quarles

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
Lily Tomlin

Long is the way And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
John Milton

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
Lao Tzu

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Oscar Wilde

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
Joseph Addison

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
Louis D. Brandeis


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Martin Luther King Day https://www.english-culture.com/martin-luther-king-day/ Sun, 19 Jan 2025 10:26:03 +0000 https://www.english-culture.com/?p=118997 Martin Luther King Day (officially Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and sometimes referred to as MLK Day) is a federal holiday in the United States marking the birthday of Martin Luther …

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Martin Luther King Jr. Day and quotes
Martin Luther King Jr. Day and quotes

Martin Luther King Day (officially Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and sometimes referred to as MLK Day) is a federal holiday in the United States marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year. Born in 1929, King’s actual birthday is January 15 (which in 1929 fell on a Tuesday). The holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The earliest Monday for this holiday is January 15 and the latest is January 21. In this article we celebrate the always current moral messages and ideas of this great immortal leader.

Martin Luther King Day. At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?
Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther Day Quote
Martin Luther Day Quote

Each year on the third Monday of January, America honors the birth, life and dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As Martin Luther King Jr. Day, also known as MLK Day, is a Federal holiday, not only will schools and libraries be closed, most federal and state offices will be closed.

There will be no mail deliveries on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is a time to remember the injustices that Dr. King fought. A time to remember his fight for the freedom, equality, and dignity of all races and peoples through non violence.

Dr. King was an American clergyman and civil-rights leader. Born on 15 January 1929, he became minister of the Dexter Ave. Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. He led the black boycott of segregated city bus lines in 1956 and gained a major victory as a civil-rights leader when Montgomery buses began to operate on a desegregated basis.

King was the chief spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in 1968.

President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

King organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which provided a base to pursue further civil-rights activities, in the South and later nationwide. His philosophy of non violent resistance resulted in his arrest on numerous occasions in the 1950s and 60s. His 1963 protest in Birmingham, Alabama earned him worldwide attention.

Martin Luther King Jr. holiday
Martin Luther King Jr. holiday

He brought together more than 200,000 people on the March on Washington in August 1963 where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, at the age of 35, he was the youngest man and the third black man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

His interests widened from civil rights to include criticism of the Vietnam War and a deeper concern over poverty. His plans for a Poor People’s March to Washington in 1968 were interrupted for a trip to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking sanitation workers. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Since his assassination, Mrs. Coretta Scott King has devoted her energy and attention to developing programs and building the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband’s life and dream. The King Center is the first institution built in memory of an African American leader and hosts over one million visitors a year.

The idea of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday was promoted by labor unions in contract negotiations. After King’s death, U.S. Representative John Conyers (a Democrat from Michigan) and U.S. Senator Edward Brooke (a Republican from Massachusetts) introduced a bill in Congress to make King’s birthday a national holiday.

The bill first came to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979. However, it fell five votes short of the number needed for passage. Two of the main arguments mentioned by opponents were that a paid holiday for federal employees would be too expensive, and that a holiday to honor a private citizen would be contrary to longstanding tradition (King had never held public office). Only two other figures have national holidays in the U.S. honoring them: George Washington and Christopher Columbus.

Overall, in 2007, 33% of employers gave employees the day off, a 2% increase over the previous year. There was little difference in observance by large and small employers: 33% for firms with over 1,000 employees; and, 32% for firms with under 1,000 employees. The observance is most popular among nonprofit organizations and least popular among factories and manufacturers.

Martin Luther King Jr. love ethics
Martin Luther King Jr. love ethics

The reasons for this have varied, ranging from the recent addition of the holiday, to its occurrence just two weeks after the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when many businesses are closed for part or sometimes all of the week. Additionally, many schools and places of higher education are closed for classes; others remain open but may hold seminars or celebrations of King’s message. Some factories and manufacturers used MLK Day as a floating or movable holiday.

One place outside the U.S. where Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed with equal importance is in the Japanese city of Hiroshima under mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, who holds a special banquet at the mayor’s office as an act of unifying his city’s call for peace with King’s message of human rights. The City of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada, is another city that has officially recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day, although not as a paid holiday: all government services and businesses remain open.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day all national parks in the US are free for visitors. In Idaho, This day is known as Idaho Human Rights Day. In Arizona and New Hampshire, the day is known as Civil Rights Day. See the table above for the full list of additional/alternative State holidays on the Third Monday in January.

Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965
Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965

The famous musician Stevie Wonder was a strong supporter of the movement to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. In 1981, he wrote and released one of his most popular songs ‘Happy Birthday’ to highlight the cause. The bill to create Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy and passed the senate in October of 1983. The following month, President Reagan signed it, establishing the Third Monday of every January as Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday, beginning in 1986.

Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As with the lives of other major historical figures, King’s life has been interpreted in new ways by successive generations of scholars, many of whom have drawn attention to the crucial role of local Black leaders in the African American protest movements of the 1950s and ’60s. Recognizing that grassroots activists such as Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others prepared the way for King’s rise to national prominence, biographers and historians have questioned the view that Southern Black protest movements relied on King’s charismatic guidance. Nonetheless, studies of King continue to acknowledge his distinctive leadership role. (Read the full article on https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr/Legacy)


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Here are the major U.S. holidays. In some cases, businesses, government offices, and schools will be closed, and also the International Days list.

New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day
MLK Jr. Day
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter/Spring Break
Mother’s Day
Memorial Day
Father’s Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
International Days List

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Quotes and aphorisms on motivation https://www.english-culture.com/quotes-and-aphorisms-on-motivation/ Sat, 16 Nov 2024 19:06:12 +0000 https://www.english-culture.com/?p=161377 Quotes and aphorisms on motivation, a selection of great sentences by famous authors to inspire and strengthen your will in order to increase also your resilience. The secret of human motivation lies …

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Quotes and aphorisms on motivation
Quotes and aphorisms on motivation

Quotes and aphorisms on motivation, a selection of great sentences by famous authors to inspire and strengthen your will in order to increase also your resilience.

The secret of human motivation lies in purpose, autonomy, and mastery. These elements drive people to engage, persist, and excel in their endeavors. Motivation is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. While genetic predispositions can affect baseline levels of drive and persistence, motivation can also be significantly cultivated and enhanced through learning, experiences, and the environment.

Motivational quotes have a practical and direct purpose, often aiming to stimulate concrete actions. They are used to give the push needed to face challenges, to maintain focus on specific goals and to persevere in the face of difficulties. Motivational phrases tend to be pragmatic, energetic and results-oriented, inviting us to take action. These nuggets of wisdom encourage us to always do better, to never give up and to always move forward no matter what happens.

Money is important for providing motivation, especially for meeting basic needs and achieving financial security. However, its effectiveness as a motivator diminishes once these needs are met. Intrinsic motivators, such as personal growth, autonomy, and a sense of purpose, often play a more significant role in sustained motivation and job satisfaction.

To be motivated you have to find a goal, pursue a goal, stimulate desire, cultivate passion and not just think about satisfying your physiological needs, and filling the sewers.
Carl William Brown

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it destiny.
Carl Gustav Jung

Death, memory, memories, these are the three fundamental key words of all human art.
Carl William Brown

It’s human nature when you lose money quickly you want to make it back twice as quick. Slow down, keep focused, and stick to your strategy.
Ian Cassel

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goals requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Martin Luther King

Slow, steady progress is better than daily excuses.
Robin Sharma

Very often there is nothing more unconscious than our ignorance, of which we obviously disregard the existence; therefore opening the mind to the ethics of knowledge and cultivating one’s learning is the only wise thing to do in order to give a sense to our mysterious life.
Carl William Brown

True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.
John W. Gardner

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.
Wayne Dyer

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain

Go boldly after what you want and expect some setbacks, some disappointments, and some rotten days. Embrace them all as a valuable part of the process and learn to say, Thank you, teacher.
Mark Minervini

Strive not to be merely successful, but rather to be of value.
Albert Einstein

You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.
Ted Turner

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.
Tony Robbins

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
Les Brown

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
Helen Keller

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.
Bobby Knight

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.
H. L. Hunt

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James

No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.
Jessica Savitch

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale

Don’t let yourself be discouraged, move, think, read, listen to music, exercise, learn something, take action, stay calm, strengthen your concentration, and trust yourself as you continue your fight.
Carl William Brown

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Zig Ziglar

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
Epictetus

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Stevie Wonder

Who seeks shall find.
Sophocles

It’s always too early to quit.
Norman Vincent Peale

Never give in and never give up.
Hubert H. Humphrey

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.
Anonumous

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Albert Camus

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.
Les Brown

It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Nelson Mandela

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
Charles R. Swindoll

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.
Sam Levenson

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
Pope John XXIII

Character is destiny, that is, our life is closely linked to our behavior and vice versa.
Carl William Brown

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
Confucius

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.
Tony Robbins

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.
Allen Ginsberg

Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.
George Whitefield

Never, never, never give up.
Winston Churchill

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Henry Ford

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.
Jim Rohn

My mum was massively important to everything I’ve done, and now her memory is a motivational tool for me.
Fran Kirby

Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then set yourself earnestly to do it.
Phillips Brooks

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.
Brian Tracy

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.
H. L. Hunt

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.
Baltasar Gracian

Don’t underestimate yourself, don’t be a fanatic or a fan, not even of heroes, always remember that man is not a superior animal at all, in fact he is the most squalid of all.
Carl William Brown

The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.
Philip Emeagwali

When you fail you learn from the mistakes you made and it motivates you to work even harder.
Natalie Gulbis

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.
Saint Teresa of Avila

The more we do, the more we can do.
William Hazlitt

I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything… at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.
Dan Millman

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
Elon Musk

The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.
Bobby Knight

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William Butler Yeats

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao Tzu

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
William Blake

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
Aristotle

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.
Mark Caine

Some scholars wonder why I am so motivated to attack stupidity, and they do not know that my motivation comes from the very kinds of questions they are used to asking.
Carl William Brown

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
Aldous Huxley

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.
Robert H. Schuller

Either I will find a way, or I will make one.
Philip Sidney

Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.
Alfred A. Montapert

He conquers who endures.
Persius

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.
Nikos Kazantzakis

The people who influence you are the people who believe in you.
Henry Drummond

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.
Florence Nightingale

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.
John F. Kennedy

Unfortunately for the muses it is not a great satisfaction that too many people think only of satisfying their physiological needs and of filling the sewers more and more.
Carl William Brown

The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.
Sylvia Browne

If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
Emile Zola

Always desire to learn something useful.
Sophocles

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.
Muhammad Ali

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.
Baltasar Gracian

A goal is a dream with a deadline.
Napoleon Hill

I was motivated to be different in part because I was different.
Donna Brazile

You shouldn’t need a stupid mass of people to confirm your value, your confidence must come from within.
Carl William Brown

Music – it’s motivational and just makes you relax.
Taika Waititi

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
Eleanor Roosevelt

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
George S. Patton

Leap, and the net will appear.
John Burroughs

If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin

Success is the only motivational factor that a boy with character needs.
Woody Hayes

Fear of failure, it’s the greatest motivational tool. It drives me and drives me and drives me.
Jerry West

Time forbids you to go back and change the beginning, but you can proceed further on and try to change the ending.
Carl William Brown

You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.
George S. Patton

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.
W. Clement Stone

Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.
George Whitefield


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