Month: June 2006

Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth and set down as gain each day that fortune grants.

No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.

What Love is Like

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair or the future of the human race.

Found here

My new bicycle here

A Clear Midnight

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

There are seven sins in the world: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.

Favourite

When they ask me, “Who’s your favourite poet?”
I’d better not mention you,
Though you certainly are my favourite poet
And I like your poems too.

When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.

I wake up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day a little difficult.

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

I am his Highness’ dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Engraved on the collar of a dog he gave to the King.

I claim the right to contradict myself. I don’t want to deprive myself of the right to talk nonsense, and I ask humbly to be allowed to be wrong sometimes.

What is the difference between exploring and being lost?

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Ulysses

Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tactics is when you keep firing so that the enemy won’t realise you ran out of ammo half an hour ago.

Love me when I least deserve it, because that is when I really need it.

Someone must play the minor parts,
Someone must hold the spear,
And someone, when the music starts,
Must follow in the rear.
Not everyone can be the star,
That shines with great white light,
But some must twinkle from afar
To harmonize the night.

Luck never gives: it only lends.

eclair: a cake, long in shape but short in duration.

No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.

Written On The Wall At Chang’s Hermitage

It is spring in the Mountains.
I come along seeking you.
The sound of chopping wood echoes
Between the silent peaks.
The streams are still icy.
There is snow on the trail.
At sunset I reach your grove
In the stony mountain pass.
You want nothing, although at night
You can see the aura of gold
And silver ore all around you.
You have learned to be gentle
As the mountain deer you have tamed.
The way back forgotten, hidden
Away, I become like you
An empty boat, floating, adrift.

You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.