• Saint Thomas Aquinas

    The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

  • Samuel Butler

    All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

  • Dylan Thomas

    Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
    Because their words had forked no lightning they
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
    Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
    And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
    Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    And you, my father, there on the sad height,
    Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
    Do not go gentle into that good night.
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  • Richard Feynman

    Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.

  • Piet Hein

    Thoughts On A Station Platform

    It ought to be plain
    how little you gain
    by getting excited
    and vexed.

    You’ll always be late
    for the previous train,
    and always in time
    for the next

  • E E Cummings

    plato told

    him:he couldn’t
    believe it(jesus

    told him;he
    wouldn’t believe
    it)lao

    tsze
    certainly told
    him, and general
    (yes

    mam)
    sherman;
    and even
    (believe it
    or

    not)you
    told him:i told
    him; we told him
    (he didn’t believe it, no

    sir)it took
    a nipponized bit of
    the old sixth

    avenue
    el;in the top of his head :to tell

    him

    note: In the 1930s, the city of New York dismantled the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad and sold the steel as scrap to Japan – where it was used to make bullets.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

  • Piet Hein

    The Miracle Of Spring

    We glibly talk
    of nature’s laws
    but do things have
    a natural cause?

    Black earth turned into
    yellow crocus
    is undiluted
    hocus-pocus.

  • C S Lewis

    Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

  • William Blake

    I was angry with my friend:
    I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
    I was angry with my foe:
    I told it not, my wrath did grow.

    And I watered it in fears,
    Night and morning with my tears;
    And I sunned it with smiles,
    And with soft deceitful wiles.

    And it grew both day and night,
    Till it bore an apple bright.
    And my foe beheld it shine.
    And he knew that it was mine,

    And into my garden stole
    When the night had veiled the pole;
    In the morning glad I see
    My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

  • Lao Tzu

    Why not simply honor your parents, love your children, help your brothers and sisters, be faithful to your friends, care for your mate with devotion, complete your work cooperatively and joyfully, assume responsibility for problems, practice virtue without first demanding it of others, understand the highest truths yet retain an ordinary manner? That would be true clarity, true simplicity, true mastery.

  • John Donne

    No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe;
    every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
    if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,
    as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy
    friends or of thine owne were;
    any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;
    And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
    It tolls for thee.

  • Lewis Carroll

    One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

  • W H Auden

    Funeral Blues

    Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
    Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
    Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
    Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
    Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
    Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
    Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
    Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
    He was my North, my South, my East and West,
    My working week and my Sunday rest,
    My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
    I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
    The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
    Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
    Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
    For nothing now can ever come to any good.

  • Mark Twain

    Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

  • Piet Hein

    Two Passivists

    Eradicate the optimist
    who takes the easy view
    that human values will persist
    no matter what we do.

    Annihilate the pessimist
    whose ineffectual cry
    is that the goal’s already missed
    however hard we try.

  • John Donne

    It is never the shallower for the calmnesse. The Sea is a deepe, there is
    as much water in the Sea, in a calme, as in a storme.