• English Monarchs

    Willie Willie Harry Stee
    Harry Dick John Harry three;
    One two three Neds, Richard two
    Harrys four five six… then who?
    Edwards four five, Dick the bad,
    Harrys (twain), Ned six (the lad);
    Mary, Bessie, James you ken,
    Then Charlie, Charlie, James again…
    Will and Mary, Anna Gloria,
    Georges four, Will four, Victoria;
    Edward seven next, and then
    Came George the fifth in nineteen ten;
    Ned the eighth soon abdicated
    Then George six was coronated;
    After which Elizabeth
    And that’s all folks until her death.

  • C S Lewis

    Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.

  • Pythagoras

    Pythagoras Theorem

    The square of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the sides.

    A Proof

    Take a square of sides length a + b inscribed by another square connecting the points a distance a from each consecutive cornert of the first square.

    Let the length of the sides of the inscribed square be c.

    Thus each side of the inscribed sqaure forms the hypotonuse of a right angled triangle having sides of length a, and b.

    The area of the larger square is (a+b)2 = a2+ b2+2*a*b

    The area of the larger square is also equal to the area of the smaller square plus the area of the four right angled triangles of sides length a and b and hypotenuse c.

    This is equal to c2 + 4* (a*b)/2

    So a2+ b2+2*a*b = c2+ 2*a*b

    So a2 + b2 = c2

    QED

  • C L Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

    But neither 30 years of 30 centuries affect the clearness or the charm of geometrical truths. Such a theorem as “The square of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the sides.” Is as dazzlingly beautiful now as it was on the day when Pythagoras first discovered it and celebrated its advent, it is said, by sacrificing a hectacomb of oxen – a method of doing honour to science that has always seemed to me slightly exaggerated and uncalled for. Even in these degenerate days, marking the epoch of some brilliant discovery by inviting a convivial friend or two over for a beefsteak and a bottle of wine. But a hectacomb of oxen! It would produce a quite inconvenient supply of meat.

  • Robert Graves

    Love Without Hope

    Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
    Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter,
    So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
    Singing about her head, as she rode by.

  • Malcolm Muggeridge

    It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits – like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits – involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding – inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.

  • Piet Hein

    Prayer (to the sun above the clouds)

    Sun that givest all things birth
    Shine on everything on earth!

    If that’s too much to demand
    Shine at least on this our land

    If even that’s too much for thee
    Shine at any rate on me

  • Andre Gide

    One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

  • Percy B Shelley

    Love’s Philosophy

    THE fountains mingle with the river,
    And the rivers with the ocean;
    The winds of heaven mix forever,
    With a sweet emotion;
    Nothing in the world is single;
    All things by a law divine
    In one another’s being mingle:-
    Why not I with thine?

    See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
    And the waves clasp one another;
    No sister flower would be forgiven
    If it disdained its brother;
    And the sunlight clasps the earth,
    And the moonbeams kiss the sea:-
    What are all these kissings worth,
    If thou kiss not me?

  • G K Chesterton

    During the first world war G K Chesterton was approached by a lady asking him “young man, why aren’t you out at the front”; having a famously rotund profile, he replied simply: “madam, if you go round to my side you will see that I am”

  • E M Forster

    Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.

  • Winston Churchill

    The heights of great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night.

  • Robert Browning

    Home-thoughts, from the Sea

    Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
    Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
    Bluish ‘mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
    In the dimmest North-east distance dawn’d Gibraltar grand and gray;
    ‘Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?’–say,
    Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
    While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

  • Henry Ford

    If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

  • Sondra Ahlen

    You see, that’s the difference between us. I assume the best about people, while you assume the worst. So I get hurt, but you get nothing.