My Small Boat

My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.

God made the integers, all the rest is the work of man.

Mr Toad
The world has held great Heroes,
As history-books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!
The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad!
The animals sat in the Ark and […]

Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.

You can’t live on amusement. It is the froth on water — an inch deep and then the mud.

And so while the great ones depart to their dinner,
the secretary stays, growing thinner and thinner,
racking his brain to record and report
what he thinks that they think that they ought to have thought.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

Just remember that the things that you put in our head are there forever, … You might want to think about that.

Two sticks and an apple,
Ring the bells at Whitechapel.
Old Father Bald Pate,
Ring the bells Aldgate.
Maids in white aprons,
Ring the bells at St. Catherine`s.
Oranges and Lemons,
Ring the bells at St. Clement`s
When will you pay me?
Ring the bells at the Old Bailey.
When I am rich,
Ring the bells at Fleetditch.
When will that be?
Ring the bells of Stepney.
When I […]

The Viking Terror
Bitter is the wind tonight.
It tosses the ocean’s white hair.
Tonight I fear not the fierce warriors of Norway
Coursing on the Irish Sea.

To begin at the beginning:
It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and- rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as […]