I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

No, no, you’re not thinking, you’re just being logical.

If your heart fails thee, climb not at all.

in response to Sir Walter Raleigh’s

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

both being scratched in a glass window pane with a diamond ring.

What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it is tied to everything else in the universe.

Early Bird

Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you’re a bird, be an early bird,
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.

The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.

Astro-Gymnastics

Go on a starlit night,
stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
outwards into space,
and let the starry
firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
your elected base.

Feel Earth’s colossal weight
of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
your strangely solid head.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

The Tiger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart,
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Simply to do what we ought is an altogether higher diviner more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshiping temple or dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

Love doesn’t sit there like a stone.
It has to be made like bread;
Remade all the time,
…Made new.

The conservative spirit of the child always makes him think of the latest as the last.

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn’t fall.

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,
and you’re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No – not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you’re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you’re hoping.

Ah, but a man’s grasp should exceed his reach,
Or what’s a heaven for?

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.