• From Mother Goose

    The North Wind Doth Blow

    The north wind doth blow,
    And we shall have snow,
    And what will the robin do then,
    Poor thing?

    He’ll sit in a barn,
    To keep himself warm,
    And hide his head under his wing,
    Poor thing.

  • Joseph Heller

    Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.

  • George Eliot

    I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

  • Hilaire Belloc

    Tarantella

    Do you remember an Inn,
    Miranda?
    Do you remember an Inn?
    And the tedding and the spreading
    Of the straw for a bedding,
    And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
    And the wine that tasted of tar?
    And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
    (Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
    Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
    Do you remember an Inn?
    And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
    Who hadn’t got a penny,
    And who weren’t paying any,
    And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
    And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
    Of the clap
    Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
    Of the girl gone chancing,
    Glancing,
    Dancing,
    Backing and advancing,
    Snapping of a clapper to the spin
    Out and in —
    And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
    Do you remember an Inn,
    Miranda?
    Do you remember an Inn?

    Never more;
    Miranda,
    Never more.
    Only the high peaks hoar:
    And Aragon a torrent at the door.
    No sound
    In the walls of the Halls where falls
    The tread
    Of the feet of the dead to the ground
    No sound:
    But the boom
    Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Know’st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom,
    Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket’s gloom,
    Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,
    And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?

  • Godfrey Hardy

    317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

  • William Thackeray

    Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.

  • Theodore Roethke

    In a Dark Time

    In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
    I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
    I hear my echo in the echoing wood–
    A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
    I live between the heron and the wren,
    Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

    What’s madness but nobility of soul
    At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
    I know the purity of pure despair,
    My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
    That place among the rocks–is it a cave,
    Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

    A steady storm of correspondences!
    A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
    And in broad day the midnight come again!
    A man goes far to find out what he is–
    Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
    All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

    Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
    My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
    Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
    A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
    The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
    And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

  • Stephen Crane

    A man said to the universe:
    “Sir I exist!”
    “However,” replied the universe,
    “The fact has not created in me
    A sense of obligation.”

  • Seneca

    I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    To a Coin

    Cold and stormy the night I sailed from Montevideo.
    As we rounded the Cerro,
    I threw from the upper deck
    a coin that glinted and winked out in the muddy water,
    a gleam of light swallowed by time and darkness.
    I felt I had committed an irrevocable act,
    adding to the history of the planet
    two endless series, parallel, possibly infinite:
    my own destiny, formed from anxieties, love and futile upsets
    and that of that metal disk
    carried away by the water to the quiet depths
    or to far-off seas that still wear down
    the leavings of Saxon and Viking.
    Any moment of mine, asleep or wakeful,
    matches a moment of the sightless coin’s.
    At times I have felt remorse,
    at others, envy
    of you, existing, as we do, in time and its labyrinth,
    but without knowing it.

  • Homer Adkins

    Basic research is like shooting an arrow in the air and, where it lands, painting a target

  • William Blake

    Three Things to Remember

    A Robin Redbreast in a cage,
    Puts all Heaven in a rage.

    A skylark wounded on the wing
    Doth make a cherub cease to sing.

    He who shall hurt the little wren
    Shall never be beloved by men.

  • Erich Fried

    What it is

    It is madness
    says reason
    It is what it is
    says love

    It is unhappiness
    says caution
    It is nothing but pain
    says fear
    It has no future
    says insight
    It is what it is
    says love

    It is ridiculous
    says pride
    It is foolish
    says caution
    It is impossible
    says experience
    It is what it is
    says love.

  • George Orwell

    At this moment a man, presumably carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained from shooting at him. It is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely to hit a running man at a hundred yards…. Still, I did not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had come here to shoot at “Fascists”; but a man who is holding up his trousers isn’t a Fascist he is visibly a fellow creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t feel like shooting at him.

  • Constantine P. Cavafy

    Waiting for the Barbarians

    What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

    The barbarians are to arrive today.

    Why such inaction in the Senate?
    Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?

    Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
    What laws can the Senators pass any more?
    When the barbarians come they will make the laws.

    Why did our emperor wake up so early,
    and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
    on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?

    Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
    And the emperor waits to receive
    their chief. Indeed he has prepared
    to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
    many titles and names of honor.

    Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
    today in their red, embroidered togas;
    why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
    and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
    why are they carrying costly canes today,
    wonderfully carved with silver and gold?

    Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
    and such things dazzle the barbarians.

    Why don’t the worthy orators come as always
    to make their speeches, to have their say?

    Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
    and they get bored with eloquence and orations.

    Why all of a sudden this unrest
    and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
    Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
    and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?

    Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
    And some people arrived from the borders,
    and said that there are no longer any barbarians.

    And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
    Those people were some kind of solution.

  • Albert Einstein

    When asked to describe radio.

    You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

  • J K Galbraith

    Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.