• John Agard

    Call alligator long-mouth
    call alligator saw-mouth
    call alligator pushy-mouth
    call alligator scissors-mouth
    call alligator raggedy-mouth
    call alligator bumpy-bum
    call alligator all dem rude word
    but better wait
    ….. till you cross river.

  • Davy Crocket

    I leave this rule for others when I’m dead
    Be always sure you’re right – THEN GO AHEAD!

  • Horatio William Bottomley

    Ending his career as journalist and politician with a 5 year prison sentence for fraud, Bottomley was approached whilst stitching mailbags by a prison visitor who asked him:

    ‘Sewing, Bottomley’

    to which he simply replied:

    ‘No, reaping.’

  • Benjamin Zephaniah

    Talking Turkeys

    Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
    Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
    Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
    An every turkey has a Mum.
    Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
    Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
    It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
    Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
    I got lots of friends who are turkeys
    An all of dem fear christmas time,
    Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
    An humans are out of dere mind,
    Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
    Dey all hav a right to a life,
    Not to be caged up an genetically made up
    By any farmer an his wife.

    Turkeys just wanna play reggae
    Turkeys just wanna hip-hop
    Can yu imagine a nice young turkey saying,
    ‘I cannot wait for de chop’,
    Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
    Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
    In many ways like yu an me.

    I once knew a turkey called – Turkey
    He said “Benji explain to me please,
    Who put de turkey in christmas
    An what happens to christmas trees?”,
    I said “I am not too sure turkey
    But it’s nothing to do wid Christ Mass
    Humans get greedy an waste more dan need be
    An business men mek loadsa cash’.

    Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
    Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
    Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
    In a plate of organic grown beans,
    Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
    An spare dem de cut of de knife,
    Join Turkeys United an dey’ll be delighted
    An yu will mek new friends ‘FOR LIFE’.

  • Boris Johnson

    from The Perils of the Pushy Parents

    One Christmas in the usual way
    The school put on a touching play
    To mark Our Lord’s nativity
    Young Molly was enthralled to be
    Elected by her cheering class
    To play the reasr end of the ASS
    ‘What DO you mean?’ cried Molly’s mum.
    ‘They’ve made you act a donkey’s bum?
    How dare they force my little lass
    to imitate as ass’s ass?
    We rather hoped the BBC
    Would hire you as a news trainee.
    And after that it’s our intent
    To shove you into parliament.
    Up the greasy pole – and then
    Propel you into Number 10!
    But as it is your school, God rot ’em.
    Potrays you as some dobbin’s bottom.
    What kind of university
    Wants “donkey bum” on your CV?’
    Before the girl could disabuse her
    Mum had found the show’s producer
    And as a stork devours a frog
    She seized the trembling pedagogue.
    Quite what she whispered in his ear
    I cannot say and yet I fear
    It must have been extremely scary
    He sacked the pupil playing Mary
    And handing her a donkey’s tail
    He hushed her unbelieving wail:
    ‘Can it kiddo, you’re a gonner.
    We’re casting Molly as Madonna!’

  • Kurt Vonnegut

    Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

  • Gore Vidal

    I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

  • Edmund Burke

    The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

  • Arthur Guiterman

    What One Approves, Another Scorns

    What one approves,
    another scorns,
    and thus
    his nature each discloses.
    You find the rosebush
    full of thorns,
    I find the
    thornbush full of roses.

  • Don Paterson

    My obsession with computers (what an infancy they’re in, and how it charms) is a kind of nostalgia for the future. I long to be-half man half-desk.

  • Carl Sandburg

    Dust

    Here is dust remembers it was a rose
    one time and lay in a woman’s hair.
    Here is dust remembers it was a woman
    one time and in her hair lay a rose.
    Oh things one time dust, what else now is it
    you dream and remember of old days?

  • Spike Milligan

    Down the Stream the Swans All Glide

    Down the stream the swans all glide;
    It’s quite the cheapest way to ride.
    Their legs get wet,
    Their tummies wetter:
    I think after all
    The bus is better.

  • Mark Twain

    If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

  • Václav Havel

    Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

  • Horace

    Odes, Book 3, Verse 29: Happy the Man

    Happy the man, and happy he alone,
    He who can call today his own:
    He who, secure within, can say,
    Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
    Be fair or foul or rain or shine
    The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
    Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
    But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

  • F E Smith

    On Winston Churchill

    He has devoted the best years of his life to preparing his impromptu speeches.

  • Carolyn Wells

    The Flute Tutor

    A tooter who tooted a flute
    tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
    Said the two to the tooter,
    “Is it harder to toot, or
    to tutor two tooters to toot?”

  • CzesÅ‚aw MiÅ‚osz

    …poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
    under unbearable duress and only with the hope
    that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.