• Horace

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

  • Cicero

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

  • Walt Whitman

    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.

  • Anna Quindlen

    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.

  • Gandhi

    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.

  • Wendy Cope

    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.

  • Elwyn Brooks White

    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.

  • Matt Cartmill

    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.

  • William Shakespeare

    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.

  • Vincent van Gogh

    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.

  • G K Chesterton

    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.

  • Alexander Pope

    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.

  • Federico Fellini

    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.

  • Samuel Johnson

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

  • Alfred Lord Tennyson

    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

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

  • Ruby Ingraham

    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.

  • Tu Fu

    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.