• Eugenio Montejo

    The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

    The earth turned to bring us closer,
    it spun on itself and within us,
    and finally joined us together in this dream
    as written in the Symposium.

    Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
    time passed in minutes and millennia.
    An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
    arrived in Nebraska.

    A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
    in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
    The earth was spinning with its music
    carrying us on board;

    it didn’t stop turning a single moment
    as if so much love, so much that’s miraculous
    was only an adagio written long ago
    in the Symposium’s score.

  • W H Auden

    Evil is unspectacular and always human,
    And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

  • Tom Stoppard

    Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d’etat by the second rank – troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men – I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while the eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister’s Humber – comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges – And march – an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-hand men – storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet mallet – stand-ins of the world stand up!

  • Wendy Cope

    Timekeeping

    Late home for supper.
    He musn’t seem drunk.
    ‘The pob cluck’, he begins,
    And knows that he is sunk.

  • Chuck Palahniuk

    The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don’t participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of the audience.

  • Thomas Paine

    A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable cry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

  • Philip Larkin

    1952-1977

    In times when nothing stood
    but worsened, or grew strange,
    there was one constant good:
    she did not change.

    on the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977

  • W S Merwin

    Separation

    Your absence has gone through me
    Like thread through a needle.
    Everything I do is stitched with its color.

  • Lewis Carroll

    How Doth the Little Crocodile

    How doth the little crocodile
    Improve his shining tail,
    And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!
    How cheerfully he seems to grin,
    How neatly spreads his claws,
    And welcomes little fishes in,
    With gently smiling jaws!

  • Bruce Cockburn

    Strange Waters

    I’ve seen a high cairn kissed by holy wind
    Seen a mirror pool cut by golden fins
    Seen alleys where they hide the truth of cities
    The mad whose blessing you must accept without pity

    I’ve stood in airports guarded glass and chrome
    Walked rifled roads and landmined loam
    Seen a forest in flames right down to the road
    Burned in love till I’ve seen my heart explode

    You’ve been leading me
    Beside strange waters

    Across the concrete fields of man
    Sun ray like a camera pans
    Some will run and some will stand
    Everything is bullshit but the open hand

    You’ve been leading me
    Beside strange waters
    Streams of beautiful lights in the night
    But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys?
    If I loose my grip, will I take flight?

    You’ve been leading me
    Beside strange waters
    Streams of beautiful lights in the night
    But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys?
    If I loose my grip, will I take flight?

  • Albert Einstein

    Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.

  • Sappho

    Two Fragments

    Love holds me captive again
    and I tremble with bittersweet longing.

    As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree
    I am rocked by my love.

  • Horace Greeley

    The darkest hour in any man’s life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.

  • Karl Popper

    Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

  • Emily Dickinson

    There is a solitude of space

    There is a solitude of space
    A solitude of sea
    A solitude of death, but these
    Society shall be
    Compared with that profounder site
    That polar privacy
    A soul admitted to itself —
    Finite infinity.

  • African proverb

    Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
    It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
    Every morning a lion wakes up.
    It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
    It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
    When the sun comes up, you better start running.

  • A A Milne

    James James
    Morrison Morrisson
    Weatherby George Dupree
    Took great care of his mother
    Though he was only three.
    James James said to his mother
    Mother he said, said he:
    You mustn’t go down to the end of the town if you don’t go down with me.
    James James Morrison’s Mother
    Put on a golden gown.
    James James Morrison’s Mother
    Went to the end of the town
    James James Morrison’s Mother
    Said to herself, said she:
    I can go right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea!

  • Siegbert Tarrasch

    What is the object of playing a gambit opening?… To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game.

  • Jenny Joseph

    Tides

    There are some coasts
    Where the sea comes in spectacularly
    Throwing itself up gullies, challenging cliffs,
    Filling the harbours with great swirls and flourish,
    A theatrical event that people gather for
    Curtain up twice daily. You need to know
    The hour of its starting, you have to be on guard.

    There are other places
    Places where you do not really notice
    The gradual stretch of the fertile silk of water
    No gurgling or dashings here, no froth no pounding
    Only at some point the echo may sound different
    And looking by chance one sees ‘Oh the tide is in.’

  • Friedrich Nietzsche

    The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.