My Small Boat

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

Like Snow
She, then, like snow in a dark night,
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye,
So that some muttered ‘Too much light’,
And drew the curtains close.
Like snow, warmer than fingers feared,
And to soil friendly;
Holding the histories of the night
In yet unmelted tracks.

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, […]

Certainties are arrived at only on foot.

Outdoor Hum For Snowy Weather
The more it snows
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
On snowing.
And nobody knows
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
Are growing.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot.

The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the […]

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.