• G K Chesterton

    Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

  • P G Wodehouse

    … I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.

  • Michael Donaghy

    Machines

    Dearest, note how these two are alike:
    This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
    And the racer’s twelve-speed bike.

    The machinery of grace is always simple.
    This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
    To another of concentric gears,
    Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
    Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers.
    And in the playing, Purcell’s chords are played away.

    So this talk, or touch if I were there,
    Should work its effortless gadgetry of love,
    Like Dante’s heaven, and melt into the air.

    If it doesn’t, of course, I’ve fallen. So much is chance,
    So much agility, desire, and feverish care,
    As bicyclists and harpsichordists prove
    Who only by moving can balance,
    Only by balancing move.

  • Ralph Charel

    Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.

  • Richard Wilbur

    A Barred Owl

    The warping night-air having brought the boom
    Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
    We tell the wakened child that all she heard
    Was an odd question from a forest bird,
    Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
    “Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

    Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
    Can also thus domesticate a fear,
    And send a small child back to sleep at night
    Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
    Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
    Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

  • Elizabeth Barret Browning

    The earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God, but only those with eyes to see take off their shoes, the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

  • Piet Hein

    People are self-centered
    to a nauseous degree.
    They will keep on about themselves
    while I’m explaining me.

  • J M Barrie

    It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?

    said to H.G. Wells.

  • Anthony Thwaite

    Simple Poem

    I shall make it simple so you understand.
    Making it simple will make it clear for me.
    When you have read it, take me by the hand
    As children do, loving simplicity.

    This is the simple poem I have made.
    Tell me you understand. But when you do
    Don’t ask me in return if I have said
    All that I meant, or whether it is true.

  • Michael Scott on Feynman

    There were 183 of us freshmen, and a bowling ball hanging from the three – story ceiling to just above the floor. Feynman walked in and, without a word, grabbed the ball and backed against the wall with the ball touching his nose. He let go, and the ball swung slowly 60 feet across the room and back – stopping naturally just short of crushing his face. Then he took the ball again, stepped forward, and said: “I wanted to show you that I believe in what I’m going to teach you over the next two years.”

  • James Fenton

    The Ideal

    This is where I came from.
    I passed this way.
    This should not be shameful
    Or hard to say.

    A self is a self.
    It is not a screen.
    A person should respect
    What he has been.

    This is my past
    Which I shall not discard.
    This is the ideal.
    This is hard.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson

    A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

  • Fleur Adcock

    Halfway Street, Sidcup

    We did sums at school, Mummy –
    You do them like this: look – I showed her.

    It turned out she knew already .

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.