My Small Boat

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 […]

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 […]

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.