Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

Alone

In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By sharp and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.

You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Music, when Soft Voices die

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circustent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because

One kind word can warm three winter months.

Style that shows in only decorating, not style

The Road To Wisdom

The road to wisdom? — Well, it’s plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

It is disconcerting to reflect on the number of students we have flunked for not knowing what we later found to be untrue.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Leisure

WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?-

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

No, no, you’re not thinking, you’re just being logical.

If your heart fails thee, climb not at all.

in response to Sir Walter Raleigh’s

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

both being scratched in a glass window pane with a diamond ring.

What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it is tied to everything else in the universe.

Early Bird

Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you’re a bird, be an early bird,
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.

The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.

Astro-Gymnastics

Go on a starlit night,
stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
outwards into space,
and let the starry
firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
your elected base.

Feel Earth’s colossal weight
of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
your strangely solid head.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

The Tiger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart,
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Simply to do what we ought is an altogether higher diviner more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshiping temple or dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

Love doesn’t sit there like a stone.
It has to be made like bread;
Remade all the time,
…Made new.

The conservative spirit of the child always makes him think of the latest as the last.

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn’t fall.

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,
and you’re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No – not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you’re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you’re hoping.

Ah, but a man’s grasp should exceed his reach,
Or what’s a heaven for?

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

I can keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once but I can only think of one practical thing at a time.

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Knowledge consists of knowing that a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom consists of not putting it in a fruit salad.

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

Style is the feather that helps the arrow fly, not the one that you put in your hat.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Inland

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore —
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbor’s head,
What do they long for, as I long for, —
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning —
One salt taste of the sea once more?

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Go not for every grief to the physician, nor for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

The Ant

The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.

What is the use of a newborn baby?

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Sometimes it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.

Winter

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When Blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.

A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.

Of Covetyce

FREDOME, honour, and nobilnes,
Meid, manheid, mirth, and gentilnes
Ar now in cowrt reput as vyce,
And all for caus of cuvetice.

All weilfair, welth, and wantones
Ar chengit into wretchitnes,
And play is sett at littill price;
And all for caus of covetyce.

Halking, hunting, and swift hors rynning
Ar chengit all in wrangus wynnyng;
Thair is no play bot cartis and dyce;
And all for caus of covetyce.

Honorable houshaldis ar all laid doun;
Ane laird hes with him bot a loun,
That leidis him eftir his devyce;
And all for caus of covetyce.

In burghis, to landwart and to sie,
Quhair was plesour and grit plentie,
Vennesoun, wyld fowill, wyne, and spyce,
Ar now decayid thruch covetyce.

Husbandis that grangis had full grete,
Cattell and corne to sell and ete,
Hes now no beist bot cattis and myce;
And all thruch caus of covettyce.

Honest yemen in every toun
War wont to weir baith reid and broun,
Ar now arrayit in raggis with lyce;
And all thruch caus of covetyce.

And lardis in silk harlis to the heill,
For quhilk thair tennentis sald somer meill,
And leivis on rutis undir the ryce;
And all thruch caus of covetyce.

Quha that dois deidis of petie,
And leivis in pece and cheretie,
Is haldin a fule, and that full nyce;
And all thruch caus of covetyce.

And quha can teive uthir menis rowmis,
And upoun peur men gadderis sowmis,
Is now ane active man and wyice;
And all thruch caus of covetyce.

Man, pleis thy makar and be mirry,
And sett not by this warld a chirry;
Wirk for the place of paradyce,
For thairin ringis na covettyce.

attempted translation

Of Avarice

Freedom, honour and nobleness
Merit, manhood, mirth and gentleness
Are now in court reputed as vice,
And all for cause of avarice.

All welfare wealth and wantonness
Are changed into wretchedness,
And play is set at little price;
And all for cause of avarice.

Hawking, hunting and swift horse running
Are changed all in wrongful whining;
There is no play but cards and dice;
And all for cause of avarice

Honourable householders are all laid down;
A lord has with him but a loon,
That leads him after his own wish;
And all for cause of avarice

In town, on the land and to the sea,
Where there was pleasure and great plenty,
Venison, wild fowl, wine and spice,
Are now decayed through avarice.

Husbands that [?granges had full great]
Cattle and corn to sell and eat,
Has now no beast but cats and mice;
And all because of avarice.

Honest yeomen in every town
Were want to wear both red and brown
Are now arrayed in rags and lice;
And all through cause of avarice.

And Ladies in silk [from head to heel]
For which their tenants sold [summer meal],
And lives on [roots under the brushwood]
And all through cause of avarice.

Who that does deeds of piety
And lives in peace and charity,
Is held a fool, and that full nice;
And all through cause of avarice.

And who can steal other men’s farms
And from poor men gather sums
Is now an active man and wise;
And all through cause of avarice.

Man please thy maker and be merry,
And set not by this world a cherry;
Work for the place of paradise
For therein reigns no avarice.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet.

In fact he cared for nothing but God, or rather he cared for everything because it belonged to God.

Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

The Ontological Argument – Proslogion Ch II

…since the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God? (Psalms xiv. 1). But, at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak – a being than which nothing greater can be conceived – understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.

For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.

Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.

Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

(on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague)

This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.

The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

From “Till We Have Faces”

[Psyche]
“I have always — at least, ever since I can remember — had a kind of longing for death.”

[Orual]
“Ah, Psyche,” I said, “have I made you so little happy as that?”

[Psyche]
“No, no no,” she said. “You don’t understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine … where you couldn’t see Glome ore the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and loking at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.

…

[Psyche]
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Should’st Rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than Empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should grow to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart.
For Lady you deserve this State;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My echoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv’d Virginity:
And you quaint Honour turns to dust;
And into ashes all my Lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing Soul transpires
At every pore with instant Fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt pow’r.
Let us roll all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Through the Iron gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Art like morality, consists of drawing a line somewhere.

What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter as if he were a man but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

Reform! Reform! Aren’t things bad enough already?

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.

Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

If you wait by the river long enough, eventually you will see the bodies of all your enemies float by.

Hofstadter’s Law:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I’m growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!

The Cow

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.

Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.

“Life is strange” said Jeremy”. “Compared with what?” replied the spider.

I am sure that one cannot love life enough; but I believe, too, one mustn’t confuse love of life with love of certain things in it. One cannot pick the moment and the place as one pleases and say “Enough! This is all I want. This is how it is henceforth to be.”

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.

The Nativity

Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
Give me an ox’s strength.

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
So may my beastlike folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence!

The first thing I remember about the world…is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which is at once the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.

If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations, then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. And if your theory contradicts the facts, well, sometimes these experimentalists make mistakes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation”—

A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.

Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

Any defineable sytem of mathematics or logic is either inconsitent or incomplete; that is for any finite or infintely enumerable set of axioms, sufficient to encompass arithemtic there is either a statement “X” and a statement “not X” that can both be proved (inconsitent) or there is a meaningful statement X that can neither be proved not disproved (incomplete) within that system.

or

Truth is deeper than proof

or (more importantly)

Mathermatical Logicians will always find employment.

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set abut it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.

A wise traveller has no fixed rules and is not intent upon arrival.

The Herring is a lucky fish
From all disease inured.
Should he be ill when caught at sea;
Immediately – he’s cured!

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man’s lawful prey.

Why do you think your best friend can keep a secret if you can’t.

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake–which I also keep handy.

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.

Abou Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest..
Prompting a thesis, quite hypothethetical,
That even recording angels find it best,
To keep us alphabetical.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and Iear 4 might fiks the “gj” anomali wonse and for all.Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x” — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivli.Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wudhev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Four people are in a room and seven people leave it. How many must go in before the room is empty?

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in one who eats grape-nuts on principle.

Angel’s Song

I know not, I,
What the men together say,
How lovers, lovers die
And youth passes away.

Cannot understand
Love that mortal bears
To native, native land,
All lands are theirs;

What at grave they grieve
For one voice and face
And not, and not receive
Another in its place.

I above the cone
Of the circling night
Flying, never have known
Less or greater light.

Sorrow it is they call
This cup whence my lip
(Woe’s me!) never in all
My endless days can sip.

May every young scientist remember… and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.

The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a silly proverb. “Necessity is the mother of futile dodges” is much nearer the truth.

I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

A centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog in fun
Said, “Pray which leg comes after which?”
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in the ditch,
Considering how to run.

Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.

The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.

The Donkey

When forests walked and fishes flew
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then, surely, I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening bray
And ears like errant wings –
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things:

The battered outlaw of the earth
Of ancient crooked will;
Scourge, beat, deride me – I am dumb –
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour –
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout around my head
And palms about my feet.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

The great strength of the Church of England is that it allows its followers to believe almost anything. But of course hardly any of them do

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.

(of Clement Atlee)

A modest little man with a lot to be modest about

A sheep in sheeps’ clothing.

(attributed)

An empty taxi arrived at Downing Street, and when the door opened Attlee got out

Few thought he was even a starter.
There were many who thought themselves smarter.
But he ended PM,
CH and OM,
An earl and a Knight of the Garter

Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.

Sunday …………… Absent friends.
Monday ……………Our ships at sea.
Tuesday …………..Our men.
Wednesday ………Ourselves (as no one else is likely to concern themselves with our welfare).
Thursday ………….A bloody war or a sickly season.
Friday ………………A willing foe and sea-room.
Saturday …………. Sweethearts and wives (may they never meet).

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I am beginning to believe it.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

On being asked to apologise for calling a fellow MP a liar.

Mr Speaker, I said the honourable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable member may place the punctuation where he please.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s likea whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

A boy is noise with dirt on it.

Only he who shouts for the Jews can sing the Gregorian chant.

Those to whom nothing has happpened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

Evolutionary Hymn

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there’s always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if it’s god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature’s simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
‘Goodness = what comes next.’
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

Oh then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

The only person who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

Do I not destroy my enemy when I make a friend of him

There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness… is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ”the pursuit of happiness” is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

It is better either to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

Tenuous and Precarious

Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.

My father was Hazardous,
Hazardous,
Dear old man,
Three Romans.

There was my brother Spurious,
Spurious Posthumous,
Spurious was Spurious,
Was four Romans.

My husband was Perfidious,
He was Perfidious,
Five Romans.

Surreptitious, our son,
Was Surreptitious,
He was six Romans.

Our cat Tedious
Still lives,
Count not Tedious
Yet.

My name is Finis,
Finis, Finis,
I am Finis,
Six, five, four, three, two,
One Roman,
Finis.

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

A seven-year-old of my acquaintance claimed that the last number of all was 23,000. “What about 23,000 and one?” she was asked. After a pause: “Well, I was close.”

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe. You can’t take a taxi.

Former Chinese premiere Chou En-Lai was once asked what he thought was the legacy of the French Revolution. His response reflected the perspective of five thousand years of Chinese civilization: “It is too soon to say.”

Getting facts from my files would be instantaneous
If it weren’t for the drawers marked “miscellaneous”.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

Are we not drawn onward, we few drawn onward to new era?

Euclidian Definitions

A point is that which has no parts.
A line is that which has length without breadth.
The limits of a line are points.
A straight line is that which lies equally to the points on it.
A surface is that which has only length and breadth.
The limits of a surface are lines.
A plane surface is that which lies equally to the straight lines on it.

Euclidean Axioms

Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.
If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal.
If equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal.
Things which coincide with one another are equal to one another.
The whole is greater than the part.

Euclidian Postulates

A straight line can be drawn between any two points.
A finite line can be extended infinitely in both directions.
A circle can be drawn with any centre and any radius.
All right angles are equal to each other.
Given a line and a point not on the line, only one line can be drawn through the point parallel to the line.

We do not want to be beginners but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners all our lives.

“Thank you for the flowers you’ve sent”, she said,
And sweetly smiled, and coyly turned her head.
“I am sorry for the things I said last night.
I was wrong, and you were right.
Please forgive me?”
So I forgave her.
And as we wandered through the moonlit hours,
I thought,
“What bloody flowers?”

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

There’s a lot we should be able to learn from history. And yet history proves that we never do. In fact, the main lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. This makes us look so stupid that few people care to read it. They’d rather not be reminded. Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It’s very embarrassing.

Idealism:

There once was a man who said, ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If He finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.’

A reply:

Dear Sir, Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad;
And that’s why this tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.

1st Law
You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).

2nd Law
You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).

3rd Law
You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

1st Law
The energy of a closed system is conserved (DU = DQ – DW)

2nd Law
The entropy of a closed system can never decrease (DU=T.DS – W)

3rd Law
The entropy of a perfect crystal is zero when the temperature of the crystal is equal to absolute zero (0 K).

The Rolling English Road

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

She was rather melancholoy, but hoped as much as she could, and when she could not hope did not stand still, but walked on in the dark. I think that when the sun rises upon them, some people will be astonished to find how far they have come in the dark.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Paradise Lost (book IV) – Gabriel to Satan

Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowest mine;
Neither our own, but given: What folly then
To boast what arms can do? since thine no more
Than Heaven permits, nor mine, though doubled now
To trample thee as mire: For proof look up,
And read thy lot in yon celestial sign;
Where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how weak,
If thou resist. The Fiend looked up, and knew
His mounted scale aloft: Nor more; but fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.

You play the hand you’re dealt. I think the game’s worthwhile.

If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.””The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.””The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said — “two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert … near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.” —

I lately lost a preposition:
It is, I thought, beneath my chair.
And angrily I cried: ‘Perdition!
Up from out of in under there!’

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor;
And yet I wondered: ‘What should he come
Up from out of in under for?’

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

also attributed

No one can make me feel like a doormat without my permission.

By doubting we come to inquiry, by inquiry we come to truth.

It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.

Lines Written Upon Westminster Bridge

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

We grow taller when we bow.

Why are you bothering to lie to me? You are like a man on a desert island, refusing to admit to his only other companion the he ate the last coconut.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

I have found out everything. We have come to the wrong star… That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. We are in the wrong world. When I thought that was the right town it bored me; when I knew it was the wrong, I was happy. So the false optimism, the modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The true happiness is that we don’t fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way.

The Purple Cow

I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one!

Confession

Ah yes, I wrote “The Purple Cow”
I’m Sorry now I wrote it
But I can tell you Anyhow
I’ll Kill you if you Quote it!

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.

– I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go onstage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the lines I have learnt are not in this play at all, but belong to quite a different one. Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what should I do. Then I get my cue. Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way onto the stage, and then look for guidance to the prompter, whose head i can just see rising out of the floor-boards. Alas he only signals helplessly to me and I realise of course that his script is different from mine. I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience, who begins to hiss and shout: “Get off the stage!”, “Let the play go on!”, “You’re interrupting!”. I am paralysed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don’t fit. The only lines I know.

The United States, I believe are under the impression that they are twenty years ahead of this country[Great Britain], whilst as a matter of verifiable fact of course they are just six hours behind it.

Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers won’t drown.

Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it.

Ockam’s Razor

Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

or

Plurality should not be posited without necessity.
(Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.)

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theatres and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.

The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

Pussy said to the Owl,
‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.
‘So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.””I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

On Richard Feynman

The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm:
(1) write down the problem;
(2) think very hard;
(3) write down the answer.

A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Epitaph (self written)

The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book its contents lost, torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for worms; but the work shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the author.

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Cargoes

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Once exposed to a new idea a mans mind can never go back to its original dimensions.

From “Under Which Lyre”

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon world affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
with statisticians nor commit
A social science.

When we ask advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.

Chance favours a prepared mind.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …’

Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

Lords and Commons of England – consider what nation it is whereof you are and which you are governors: a nation not slow and dull, but quick and ingenious and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point that human capacity can soar to.

Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe, bold I can meet, perhaps may turn his blow! But of all plagues, good Heavens, thy wrath can send, save, save, oh save me from the candid friend!

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

Thank heavens that the sun has gone in and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.

Half the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not.

Protect me. O Lord
My boat is so small
And your sea is so big.

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment of private judgement, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29 of May 1874 on Campden Hill, Kensington.

(first paragrapgh of his autobiography)

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience, if only one had a coloured pen long enough to reach the ceiling.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Electricity

Franklin sailed a key-hung kite
and watched the storm-stung flight of it.
Everyone was much impressed
but Edison made light of it.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

I am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I’m fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they’re rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life’s vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.