• Piet Hein

    Consolation Grook

    Losing one glove
    is certainly painful,
    but nothing
    compared to the pain,
    of losing one,
    throwing away the other,
    and finding
    the first one again.

  • G K Chesterton

    Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

  • Miroslav Holub

    Fairy Tale

    He built himself a house,
    his foundations,
    his stones,
    his walls,
    his roof overhead,
    his chimney and smoke,
    his view from the window.

    He made himself a garden,
    his fence,
    his thyme,
    his earthworm,
    his evening dew.

    He cut out his bit of sky above.

    And he wrapped the garden in the sky
    and the house in the garden
    and packed the lot in a handkerchief

    and went off
    lone as an arctic fox
    through the cold
    unending
    rain
    into the world.

  • Richard Feynman

    We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn’t any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.

  • Carol Ann Duffy

    Mrs Icarus

    I’m not the first or the last
    to stand on a hillock,
    watching the man she married
    prove to the world
    he’s a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.

  • Paul Valery

    Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

  • Alan Coren

    In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, I know one boy who won’t be sweating. I intend to raise my coffin-lid briskly, throw a few things into an overnight bag, and, whistling something appropriate, prepare to meet my Maker.

  • Katherine Philips

    Upon the graving of her Name upon a Tree in Barnelmes Walks

    Alas how barbarous are we,
    Thus to reward the courteous Tree,
    Who its broad shade affording us,
    Deserves not to be wounded thus;
    See how the Yielding Bark complies
    With our ungrateful injuries.
    And seeing this, say how much then
    Trees are more generous than men,
    Who by a Nobleness so pure
    Can first oblige and then endure.

  • Lewis Carroll

    ‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on. ‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least,- at least I mean what I say – that’s the same thing, you know.’ ‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘Why, you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see!”

  • Piet Hein

    The way to grow grand
    is not: to demand.
    In life’s every field
    you are what you yield.

  • Don Patterson

    We should never forget that of all the art forms, only the poem can be carried around in the brain perfectly intact.

  • John Donne

    Let not the Olive boast of her own fatness, nor the Fig-tree of her own sweetness, nor the Vine of her own fruitfulness, for we were all but Brambles.

  • Adrian Henri

    Galactic Lovepoem

    Warm your feet at the sunset
    Before we go to bed
    Read your book by the light of Orion
    With Sirius guarding your head
    Then reach out and switch off the planets
    We’ll watch them go out one by one
    You kiss me and tell me you love me
    By the light of the last setting sun
    We’ll both be up early tomorrow
    A new universe has begun.

  • Frank Smith

    Ignorance is not so much not knowing an answer as not knowing that there is a question. Ignorance is a blind dependence that someone else will be able to tell you what to do.

  • Cempulappeyanirar

    What He Said

    What could my mother be
    to yours? What kin my father
    to yours anyway? And how
    did you and I meet ever?
    But in love
    Our hearts have mingled
    like red earth and pouring rain.

    Cempulappeyanirar was a Tamil poet who wrote about 2000 years ago. In Tamil literary tradition many works remained anonymous and there is the practice of identifying a poet by a phrase or word from his work. So “cempulapeyanirar” literally means ‘the poet of red earth and pouring rain’.

    This is the source for the title of Vikram Chandra’s first novel ‘Red Earth and Pouring Rain’.

  • J L Austin

    An undergraduate asked the philosophy professor J L Austin – “When may we hope to see your Harvard lectures published sir?”

    To which he gave the characteristically accurate answer – “You may hope to see them published any time.”

  • Leo Tolstoy

    I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.

  • Wendy Cope

    Kindness to Animals

    If I went vegetarian
    And didn’t eat lambs for dinner,
    I think I’d be a better person
    And also thinner.

    But the lamb is not endangered
    And at least I can truthfully say
    I have never, ever eaten a barn owl,
    So perhaps I am OK.


    This poem was commissioned by the editor of “The Orange Dove of Fiji,” an anthology for the benefit of the World Wide Fund for Nature. It was rejected as unsuitable.

  • Madeleine L’Engle

    We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

  • Everett Dirksen

    When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget.