Photo Credit: Library of Congress

”When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.”’

- President Theodore Roosevelt

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on the Isle of Wight, England – photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868. (Source)

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

President Reagan presents Mother Teresa with the Medal of Freedom at a White House Ceremony, 1985. Photo Credit: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library/Source

“Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”

- Mother Teresa

Photograph of Alexander Dumas by Nadar, 1855 (Source)

“Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.”

- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

[Zim's Note: Today is the 80th Anniversary of the premiere of King Kong. I thought this was a fitting tribute to the classic film.]

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“Every time I’m in New York I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there.”

- Fay Wray, actress who portrayed the original Ann Darrow in King Kong (1933). King Kong comes to love and protect Ann Darrow and famously carries her to the top of the Empire State Building.

Two days after her death at age 96 on August 8, 2004, the lights on the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes in her memory.

Photo via Good Reads

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”

- Ayn Rand, Russian-American writer and philosopher

Photograph taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston in 1906. Photo Credit: Library of Congress

“When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.”

- George Washington Carver, an American scientist, botanist and inventor.

(Found via Huffington Post/Photo by ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images)

“Friendship takes time and energy if it’s going to work. You can luck into something great, but it doesn’t last if you don’t give it proper appreciation. Friendship can be so comfortable, but nurture it-don’t take it for granted.”

- Betty White, actress, comedian and writer

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“You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.”

- Babe Ruth

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“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist, wrote this statement in his essay Self Reliance.

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“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

- T.S. Eliot, Poet

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“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”

- Mae West, Actress

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“I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared – but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.”

- Spoken by Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights and voting rights leader, on why she put her life in danger when she volunteered to register to vote. She later became a key organizer in Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964 which campaigned to register as many African American voters in Mississippi as possible.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress

“I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children’s children.”

- Mary Harris Jones, also known as Mother Jones, labor and community organizer

”If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

- President Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States