My Small Boat

The North Wind Doth Blow
The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will the robin do then,
Poor thing?
He’ll sit in a barn,
To keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing.

Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

Tarantella
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember […]

To affect the quality of the day, that is the art of life.

The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be correct.

Know’st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom,
Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket’s gloom,
Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,
And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?

317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.

In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood–
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with […]

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty, not knowing what comes next.