My Small Boat

Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

Moore’s Paradox
It is raining but I don’t believe that it is.

… I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.

Machines
Dearest, note how these two are alike:
This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
And the racer’s twelve-speed bike.
The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome […]

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time.

This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.

A Barred Owl

The warping night-air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus […]

Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock.

The earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God, but only those with eyes to see take off their shoes, the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.