• Charles Causley

    I Am the Song

    I am the song that sings the bird.
    I am the leaf that grows the land.
    I am the tide that moves the moon.
    I am the stream that halts the sand.
    I am the cloud that drives the storm.
    I am the earth that lights the sun.
    I am the fire that strikes the stone.
    I am the clay that shapes the hand.
    I am the word that speaks the man.

  • Mark Twain

    Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
    persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
    persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
    BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.

    warning at the front of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

    Somebody

    somebody being a nobody
    thinking to look like somebody
    says that he thought me nobody
    good little somebody nobody
    had you not known me somebody
    would you have called me nobody

  • G K Chesterton

    Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front.

  • Bruce Cockburn

    Mystery

    You can’t tell me there is no mystery
    Mystery
    Mystery
    You can’t tell me there is no mystery
    It’s everywhere I turn

    Moon over junk yard where the snow lies bright
    Snow lies bright
    Snow lies bright
    Moon over junk yard where the snow lies bright
    Can set my heart to burn

    Stood before the shaman, I saw star-strewn space
    Star-strewn space
    Star-strewn space
    Stood before the shaman, I saw star strewn space
    Behind the eye holes in his face

    Infinity always gives me vertigo
    Vertigo
    Vertigo
    Infinity always gives me vertigo
    And fills me up with grace

    I was built on a Friday and you can’t fix me
    You can’t fix me
    You can’t fix me
    I was built on a Friday and you can’t fix me
    Even so I’ve done okay

    So grab that last bottle full of gasoline
    Gasoline
    Gasoline
    Grab that last bottle full of gasoline
    Light a toast to yesterday

    And don’t tell me there is no mystery
    Mystery
    Mystery
    And don’t tell me there is no mystery
    It overflows my cup

    This feast of beauty can intoxicate
    Intoxicate
    Intoxicate
    This feast of beauty can intoxicate
    Just like the finest wine

    So all you stumblers who believe love rules
    Believe love rules
    Believe love rules
    Come all you stumblers who believe love rules
    Stand up and let it shine
    Stand up and let it shine

  • Malcolm Muggeridge

    I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilisations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God’s grace and Christ’s help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfils all our hopes and desires.

  • John Masefield

    Beauty

    I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
    Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
    I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils,
    Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.

    I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea,
    And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships;
    But the loveliest thing of beauty God ever has shown to me,
    Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips.

  • William D Tammeus

    You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.

  • Raymond Carver

    And did you get what
    you wanted from this life, even so?
    I did.
    And what did you want?
    To call myself beloved, to feel myself
    beloved on the earth.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

  • George Orwell

    The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

  • Sir John Lubbock

    Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

  • Bruce Cockburn

    Joy Will Find A Way (A Song About Dying)

    Make me a bed of fond memories
    Make me to lie down with a smile
    Everything that rises afterward falls
    But all that dies has first to live.

    As longing becomes love
    As night turns to day
    Everything changes
    Joy will find a way

  • Su Shi

    To what can our life on earth be likened?
    To a flock of geese,
    alighting on the snow.
    Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.

  • Andre Gide

    Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

  • W B Yeats

    A Drinking Song

    Wine comes in at the mouth
    And love comes in at the eye;
    That’s all we shall know for truth
    Before we grow old and die.
    I lift the glass to my mouth,
    I look at you, and I sigh.