• Walter Savage Landor

    Plays

    Alas, how soon the hours are over
    Counted us out to play the lover!
    And how much narrower is the stage
    Allotted us to play the sage!
    But when we play the fool, how wide
    The theatre expands! beside,
    How long the audience sits before us!
    How many prompters! what a chorus!

  • G K Chesterton

    It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

  • H G Wells

    Whilst there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.

  • Sent Scent

    A bottle of perfume that Willie sent
    Was highly displeasing to Millicent.
    Her thanks were so cold,
    That they quarrelled, I’m told
    ‘Cause Willie sent Millicent silly scent.

  • Judith Saunders

    Mathematicians at Work

    hunker down on their hands and knees
    and sniff the problem
    poke it with ungentle fingers
    rub it raw with steel wool
    wad it up in a ball and cackle
    then pound it flat with little mallets
    watch it rise like dough (uh oh)
    resume its original shape
    screech, swing at it with hatchets
    spatter the walls with oozing fragments
    stare horrified at the shattered bits
    reassembling themselves, jump up
    attack the problem with icepicks
    gouge holes six inches deep
    and seven inches across
    (chew the mangled matter
    spit it out and belch) kick the thing
    into a corner, remove their belts
    and beat it senseless, walk off
    with the answer in their pockets.

  • George Eliot

    I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of literature and speech and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

  • Wendy Cope

    He Tells Her

    He tells her that the earth is flat –
    He knows the facts, and that is that.
    In altercations fierce and long
    She tries her best to prove him wrong.
    But he has learned to argue well.
    He calls her arguments unsound
    And often asks her not to yell.
    She cannot win. He stands his ground.

    The planet goes on being round.

  • Alfred Lord Tennyson

    Crossing the Bar

    Sunset and evening star,
    And one clear call for me!
    And may there be no moaning of the bar,
    When I put out to sea,
    But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
    Too full for sound and foam,
    When that which drew from out the boundless deep
    Turns again home.
    Twilight and evening bell,
    And after that the dark!
    And may there be no sadness of farewell,
    When I embark;
    For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
    The flood may bear me far,
    I hope to see my Pilot face to face
    When I have crossed the bar.

  • Mahalia Jackson

    It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing, that’s the Lord’s test.

  • Piet Hein

    A Maxim for Vikings

    Here is a fact
    that should help you fight a bit longer:
    Things that don’t actually kill you outright
    make you stronger.

  • Kenneth Graham

    There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do.

  • Ted Hughes

    Crow’s Account of a Battle

    There was this terrific battle.
    The noise was as much
    As the limits of possible noise could take.
    There were screams higher groans deeper
    Than any ear could hold.
    Many eardrums burst and some walls
    Collapsed to escape the noise.
    Everything struggled on its way
    Through this tearing deafness
    As through a torrent in a dark cave.

    The cartridges were banging off, as planned,
    The fingers were keeping things going
    According to excitement and orders.
    The unhurt eyes were full of deadliness.
    The bullets pursued their courses
    Through clods of stone, earth, and skin,
    Through intestines pocket-books, brains, hair, teeth
    According to Universal laws
    And mouths cried “Mamma”
    From sudden traps of calculus,
    Theorems wrenched men in two,
    Shock-severed eyes watched blood
    Squandering as from a drain-pipe
    Into the blanks between the stars.
    Faces slammed down into clay
    As for the making of a life-mask
    Knew that even on the sun’s surface
    They could not be learning more or more to the point
    Reality was giving it’s lesson,
    Its mishmash of scripture and physics,
    With here, brains in hands, for example,
    And there, legs in a treetop.
    There was no escape except into death.
    And still it went on–it outlasted
    Many prayers, many a proved watch
    Many bodies in excellent trim,
    Till the explosives ran out
    And sheer weariness supervened
    And what was left looked round at what was left.

    Then everybody wept,
    Or sat, too exhausted to weep,
    Or lay, too hurt to weep.
    And when the smoke cleared it became clear
    This has happened too often before
    And was going to happen too often in the future
    And happened too easily
    Bones were too like lath and twigs
    Blood was too like water
    Cries were too like silence
    The most terrible grimaces too like footprints in mud
    And shooting somebody through the midriff
    Was too like striking a match
    Too like potting a snooker ball
    Too like tearing up a bill
    Blasting the whole world to bits
    Was too like slamming a door,
    Too like dropping in a chair
    Exhausted with rage
    Too like being blown up yourself
    Which happened too easily
    With too like no consequences.

    So the survivors stayed.
    And the earth and the sky stayed.
    Everything took the blame.

    Not a leaf flinched, nobody smiled.

  • William Faulkner

    Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

  • Erdos

    Finally I’m becoming stupider no more.

    his suggestion for his own epitaph

  • Joseph Conrad

    from Heart of Darkness

    We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of the drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day … The dawn were heralded by a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric planet … But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roof, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droops of heavy and motionless foliage.

  • James Leigh Hunt

    A Night-Rain in Summer

    Open the window, and let the air
    Freshly blow upon face and hair,
    And fill the room, as it fills the night,
    With the breath of the rain’s sweet might.
    Hark! the burthen, swift and prone!
    And how the odorous limes are blown!
    Stormy Love’s abroad, and keeps
    Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps.

    Not a blink shall burn to-night
    In my chamber, of sordid light;
    Nought will I have, not a window-pane,
    ‘Twixt me and the air and the great good rain,
    Which ever shall sing me sharp lullabies;
    And God’s own darkness shall close mine eyes;
    And I will sleep, with all things blest,
    In the pure earth-shadow of natural rest.