The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
Month: July 2008
Mark Eckman
I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC
It highlights for my review
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I ran this poem thru it
I’m sure your pleased to no
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh
My checker told me sew.
There are a number of different versions, extensions and derivatives of this poem that can be found; however Mark Eckman has confirmed that this is the text of his original.
E E Cummings
If they give you lined paper, write the other way.
Eric Hoffer
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Robert Fulford
A print addict is a man who reads in elevators. People occasionally look at me curiously when they see me standing there, reading a paragraph or two as the elevator goes up. To me, it’s curious that there are people who do not read in elevators. What can they be thinking about?
John Boyle O’Reilly
A White Rose
The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
Samuel Butler
It has been said that whilst God cannot alter the past, historians can; it perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
David Dixon
Haiku Error Message
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
Horace Mann
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
Don Paterson
A life lived in the margins and the footnotes of himself – his epitaph: He Digressed
John Godfrey Saxe
The Blind Men and the Elephant
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a snake!
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain, quoth he;
‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: Even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!?
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a rope!
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Carl Sandburg
Elephants Are Different to Different People
Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.
Wilson said, “What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds
it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does
it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another
one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide
for? What use is it besides to look at?”
Pilcer didn’t have any questions; he was murmering to himself, “It’s
a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields,
by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like
a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;
I know elephants are good to babies.”
Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, “He’s a tough
son-of-a-gun outside and I’ll bet he’s got a strong heart, I’ll bet he’s
strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside.”
They didn’t put up any arguments.
They didn’t throw anything in each other’s faces.
Three men saw the elephant three ways
And let it go at that.
They didn’t spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;
“Sunday comes only once a week,” they told each other.
Baltasar Gracian
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
D H Lawrence
Oh, words are action good enough, if they’re the right words.
William Blake
If you trap the moment before it is ripe
The tears of repentance will certainly wipe
But if once you let the ripe moment go
You can never wipe off the tears of woe.
G K Chesterton
A stiff apology is a second insult… The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
H M Tomlinson
“Almost any book does for a bed-book,” a woman once said to me. I nearlly replied in a hurry that almost any woman would do for a wife; but that is not the way to bring people to conviction of sin.
Richard Rumbold
I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.
Sir Walter Ralegh
Sir Walter Ralegh To His Son
Three things there be that prosper up apace,
And flourish while they grow asunder far;
But on a day, they meet all in a place,
And when they meet, they one another mar.
And they be these: the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:
The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman’s bag;
The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee.
Now mark, dear boy – while these assemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.
Then bless thee, and beware, and let us pray,
We part not with thee at this meeting day.
A A Milne
The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn’t there.
Cyril Connolly
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
Ogden Nash
The Octopus
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I’d call me Us.
George Norman Douglas
It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude.
Billy Collins
Sonnet
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
Karl Popper
We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
The Frog
What a wonderful bird the frog are!
When he stand he sit almost;
When he hop he fly almost.
He ain’t got no sense hardly;
He ain’t got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost.
Letter to the Editor
(to the Times)
Sir, I see that every Christmas Handel gave “live” performances of his Messiah (The Register October 16). But then he would, wouldn’t he?
Yours faithfully
E W Lighton
Crewe, October 16