My Small Boat

A bishop interviewing Justin Welby when he first put himself forward for ordination: I have interviewed a thousand candidates for ordination and you don’t come in the top thousand.

Things I hate 1) Vandalism 2) Irony 3) Lists

I had applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries in 1948 and was called for a personal interview. However I failed to get selected. Many years later, I succeeded in finding out why I had been rejected. The remarks written by the selectors on my application were: “This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously [...]

Jairus So, God takes your child by the hand and pulls her from her deathbed. He says: ‘Feed her, she is ravenous.’ You give her fruits with thick hides – pomegranate, cantaloupe – food with weight, to keep her here. You hope that if she eats enough the light and dust and love which weave [...]

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

On September 28 the fleet came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local “fyrd” had been called out this year four times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet [...]

Milne: No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable. Ruth: I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

That is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable.

It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so odds with prayer as vanity

Show this bold Prussian that praises slaughter, slaughter brings rout. becomes How his old Russian hat raises laughter, laughter rings out.

The McNamara Fallacy The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what [...]

When I hear artists or authors making fun of business men, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.

What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

of Charles de Gaulle He looks like a female llama who has just been surprised in her bath.

News from a foreign country came As if my treasure and my wealth lay there; So much it did my heart inflame, ‘Twas wont to call my Soul into mine ear; Which thither went to meet The approaching sweet, And on the threshold stood To entertain the unknown Good. It hover’d there As if ‘twould [...]

Adherents of Xmas are exhausted and overextended but Christmas worshipers are joyful. Are you rushing or feasting?

It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

The Place Where We Are Right From the place where we are right Flowers will never grow In the spring. The place where we are right Is hard and trampled Like a yard. But doubts and loves Dig up the world Like a mole, a plow. And a whisper will be heard in the place [...]

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

The well-to-do do not want the poor to suffer. They wish them to be as happy as is consistent with the continued prosperity of the well-to-do.

To be a failure may be one step to being a saint

People who can repeat what you are saying aren’t listening

(from his television adaption of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End) A flat in Holborn! I couldn’t have imagined anything more humiliating!

…the reason why the lives of the rich are at bottom so tame and uneventful is simply that they can choose the events. They are dull because they are omnipotent. They fail to feel adventures because they can make the adventures. The thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence [...]

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we [...]

Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous.

of Richard Wagner A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself.

He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself.

Quine’s Paradox “Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation” yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

Nikainetos, third century BC I am the grave of Biton, traveller: If from Torone to Amphipolis you go Give Nicagoras this message: his one son Died in a storm, in early winter, before sunrise.

The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wycliffe’s dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be. 50 years after his death Wycliffe, who instigated the first full translation of the bible into English, was condemned for heresy and his body was dug up, his bones burned and his ashes [...]

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; But the plural of ox should be oxen not oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, Yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, But the plural of [...]

Once you have a formula and an electronic computer, there is an awful temptation to squeeze the lemon until it is dry and present a picture of the future which through its very precision and verisimilitude carries conviction. Yet a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking it a true one, is likely to be [...]

I didn’t have a pre-race ritual, only a post race one – I stood on a podium and someone put a medal around my neck.

Never have children, only grandchildren

A year from now you may wish you had started today.

The following traditional Habsburg entombment “knocking” ceremony took place at the door of Vienna’s Capuchin Friary after the funeral followed of Otto Von Habsburg. FIRST KNOCK Capuchin Friar : “Who desires admission?” Leader of funeral party: “Otto of Austria, former Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, Prince Royal of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, [...]

casual comment made within hearing of his opponent in the changing room before a big final I wouldn’t want to be playing me today.

We have been living beyond our means. We have been paying ourselves more than our efforts were earning. We sought political leaders who would assure us that the good times would never end and that the centuries of boom and bust were over; and we voted for those who offered that assurance. We sought credit [...]

I’ve been scraping little shavings off my ration of light And I’ve formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache Under a loose board in the floor And I blow across it and [...]

(an unmatched left parenthesis creates a unresolved tension that will stay with you all day

A message to the Foreign Office from Central Spain, August 1812 Gentlemen, Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our [...]

Digression is the soul of wit.

This World is not Conclusion. This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond – Invisible, as Music – But positive, as Sound – It beckons, and it baffles – Philosophy — don’t know – And through a Riddle, at the last – Sagacity, must go – To guess it, puzzles scholars – To gain [...]

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

1.if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written; 2.if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; 3.the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and 4.any book devoted to [...]

Strew gladness on the paths of men— You will not pass this way again.

If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius.

to his son For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians; your mother commands me, and you command your mother.

I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there.

Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.

On the prospects of the a French invasion during the Napoleonic wars. I do not say they cannot come – I only say they cannot come by sea.

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

In A Bath Teashop “Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another — Let us hold hands and look.” She such a very ordinary little woman; He such a thumping crook; But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels In the teashop’s ingle-nook.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank.

Snow fell, undated. Light

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together.

Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.

When you see a good move, look for a better one.

The south-west wind roaring in from the Atlantic…. is, I think the presiding genius of England.

on being asked which was his favorite chess piece It does not really matter, as long as it is an extra one.

No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.

Harpists spend 90% of their time tuning their harps and 10% playing out of tune. This is a great metaphor – I just haven’t worked out what for!

New Year Poem Tomorrow in the offices the year on the stamps will be altered; Tomorrow new diaries consulted, new calendars stand; With such small adjustments life will again move forward Implicating us all; and the voice of the living be heard: “It is to us that you should turn your straying attention; Us who [...]

“Always winter and never Christmas; think of that.” said Tumnus. “How awful!” said Lucy.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty. Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly; And thou shalt find thy dream to be A truth and noonday light to thee.

The fox knows many tricks; the hedgehog one good one.

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

“?” Single letter telegram sent by Wilde from Paris to his publisher in Britain inquiring how his new book was doing. The publisher cabled an, arguably, marginally briefer reply: “!”

Clement Freud (grandson of Sigmund) was visiting China as part of a parliamentary delegation with Winston Churchill MP and he asked of the authorities… “I am in your country with a colleague, than whom I am older, have been in parliament longer, have held higher positions in our respective political parties: we are both staying [...]

Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under [...]

Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.

(in slightly different words previously incorrectly attributed to C S Lewis) You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature…

Travel is highly educational. I can’t do with any more education. I was full up years ago.

Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the Rectory

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away.

Sailing To Byzantium That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. [...]

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.

We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.

‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi Did plane and solid in the text, All parallel were the radii, And the ang-gulls convex’d. “Beware the Wentworth-Smith, my son, And the Loci that vacillate; Beware the Axiom, and shun The faithless Postulate.” He took his Waterman in hand; Long time the proper proof he sought; Then rested [...]

@JamieFro: Someone recently told me: “We’d have less arguments if you weren’t so pedantic”. I replied, “Don’t you mean ‘fewer’?”

History is the unfolding of miscalculations

… skepticism is a resting place for reason, … but it cannot be its permanent dwelling-place.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.

It is right to be contented with what we have, never with what we are.

Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.

Adventure is just bad planning.

Eyebrows are made to be raised.

The winds that blow Ask them, which leaf of the tree Will be the next to go.

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles [...]

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die

The only problem with Haiku is that you just get started and then

a definition of poetry “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”

I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved

Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

of Jack Kerouac That’s not writing, that’s typing!

on playing chess against a slow playing opponent The slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable.

Fortune hath somewhat the nature of a woman; if she be too much wooed, she is the farther off.

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

Where Earwigs Dare A silver trail across the monitor; fresh mouse-droppings beneath the swivel-chair; the view obscured by rogue japonica. Released into the wild, where earwigs dare – you first went freelance – and then gently feral. You worked from home – then wandered out again, roughed it with spider, ant, shrew, blackbird, squirrel in [...]

My father always used to say that when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

The opposite of success isn’t failure; it is name-dropping.

Building well has three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight.

To be great, be whole: don’t exaggerate Or leave out any part of you. Be complete in each thing. Put all you are Into the least of your acts. So too in each lake, with its lofty life, The whole moon shines.

So foul a sky clears not without a storm

My reason is not framed to bend or stoop; my knees are.

Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.

He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.

Don’t just do something. Stand there.

Aunt Dahlia was staring at Jeeves like a bear about to receive a bun.

Manuscripts don’t burn

Epitaph of Sir John Strange, Master of the Rolls, who died, at the age of fifty-eight, in 1754. Here lies an honest lawyer,– that is Strange. found here

Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be.

from “King John’s Christmas.” Forget about the crackers, And forget about the candy; I’m sure a box of chocolates Would never come in handy; I don’t like oranges, I don’t want nuts, And I HAVE got a pocket-knife That almost cuts. But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all, Bring me a big, [...]

The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.

What are lawyers really? To me a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We’re all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there’s a problem, the lawyer is the only person that has actually read the inside of the top of the [...]

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score, plus three times the square root of four, Divided by seven, Plus five times eleven, Equals nine squared and not a bit more.

The Integral of tee-squared dee tee, From one to the cube root of three, Times half the cosine, Of three-pi over nine, Is the log of the sixth root of e.

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is, of which it [...]

Every chess master was once a beginner.

You can only be free if I am free.

…. with no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff.

Elegance should be left to shoemakers and tailors

I can’t forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring In summer time, and on the Down how larks and linnets sing High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and Oh the air! I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair. But now I know [...]

I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.

In Australia Inter alia, Mediocrities Think they’re Socrates.

of jazz musician and composer John Dankworth Couth, kempt and shevelled.

An alledged conversation between the taciturn president and his wife – on being asked by her what the the preacher’s sermon had been about Coolidge: Sins. Mrs. Coolidge: Well, what did he say about it? Coolidge: He was against it.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Botox Early onset taxidermy

…there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter.

Do not ask me, for I am so ignorant that I cannot tell the difference between a king and a knave. On being asked to play a table of cards, at a time when he was in dispute with the government and court.

The time will come when Winter will ask you what you were doing all Summer.

Nothing is ever lost; things only become irretrievable. What is lost, then, is the method of their retrieval, and what we rediscover is not the thing itself, but the overgrown path, the secret staircase, the ancient sewer.

The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Three little birds in a row Sat musing. A man passed near that place. Then did the little birds nudge each other. They said, “He thinks he can sing.” They threw back their heads to laugh. With quaint countenances They regarded him. They were very curious, Those three little birds in a row.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.

Honesty is praised and starves. (Probitas laudatur et alget)

On one of my birthdays I was given a toy printing-set with whose rubber letters I was able to print off my first composition. It was a story of a train going along very fast and, to the satisfaction of the passengers, racing through the samll stations along the track without stopping. Their satisfaction, however, [...]

The world is content with setting right the surface of things.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

In separateness only does love learn definition.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours … In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty [...]

People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them up was a bite from a sheep.

Retreat Before she can deliver the cruncher, I stride away backwards My car door opens, I fall in as the engine fires. I speed home in reverse, unshave, unshower, plop down in my easy chair where, picturing what a good night it’s going to be, I slowly spit up a manhattan – dry – just [...]

I Have No Gun, But I Can Spit Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or demesne. Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes I beckon you to fraternize, Beware of rudely crossing it: I have no gun, but I can spit.

In the whole village The husband alone Does not know of it 18th Century Japanese poem

For hunger is a sauce, well blended and prepared, for any food.

Peano Axioms of the Natural Numbers 1. 0 is a number. 2. The immediate successor of a number is also a number. 3. 0 is not the immediate successor of any number. 4. No two numbers have the same immediate successor. 5. Any property belonging to 0 and to the immediate successor of any number [...]

The Sleepy Giant My age is three hundred and seventy-two, And I think, with the deepest regret, How I used to pick up and voraciously chew The dear little boys whom I met. I’ve eaten them raw, in their holiday suits; I’ve eaten them curried with rice; I’ve eaten them baked, in their jackets and [...]

Alone (in bad company).

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.

All men dream: but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

The whole world would have been destroyed if pity did not put an end to anger.

As I get older I get increasingly impatient of holidays they seem to me to be an entirely feminine conception based on an impotent dislike of every day life and the romantic notion that it will all be better in Frinton or Venice

A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: the rest is a desert full of bigots. That’s what I think I’d like: where if you help a girl trim the Christmas tree you’re regarded as engaged, and her brothers start oiling [...]

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination

Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

Originality Original thought is a straightforward process. It’s easy enough when you know what to do. You simply combine in appropriate doses the blatantly false and the patently true.

Details are all that matters: God dwells there, and you never get to see Him if you don’t struggle to get them right.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

There was a young fellow from Trinity, Who took the square root of infinity. But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets; He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

Happiness is not an island, but a hill.

A movement which is confined to philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement shews itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.

Politics: a Trojan horse race.

Majority Rule His party was the Brotherhood of Brothers, and there were more of them than of the others. That is, they constituted that minority which formed the greater part of the majority. Within the party, he was of the faction that was supported by the greater fraction. And in each group, within each group, [...]

It’s is not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

From “The Real Thing” ANNIE: You’re jealous of the idea of the writer. You want to keep it sacred, special, not something anybody can do. Some of us have it, some of us don’t. We write, you get written about. What gets you about Brodie is he doesn’t know his place. You say he can’t [...]

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Rationalists, wearing square hats, Think, in square rooms, Looking at the floor, Looking at the ceiling. They confine themselves To right-angled triangles. If they tried rhomboids, Cones, waving lines, ellipses – As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon – Rationalists would wear sombreros.

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.

To live without duties is obscene.

Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

of Elbert Hubbard who died in the sinking of the Lusitania. I can not say specifically where your father and Mrs. Hubbard were when the torpedoes hit, but I can tell you just what happened after that. They emerged from their room, which was on the port side of the vessel, and came on to [...]

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, What a dust do I raise!

Election Haiku Change vs. more of the same The economy, stupid Don’t forget health care.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Conquering the world on horseback is easy; it is dismounting and governing that is hard.

John Major: “What is the situation like in Russia” Boris Yeltsin: “Good” John Major: “Could you expand on that” Boris Yeltsin: “Not Good”

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slave of some defunct economist.

I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: ‘Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.’ ….. The twenty-five percent is for error.

Daffodowndilly She wore her yellow sun-bonnet, She wore her greenest gown; She turned to the south wind And curtsied up and down. She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbour: “Winter is dead.”

Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter’s colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato’s beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam’s razor.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

But when a rule is extremely complex, that which conforms to it passes for random.

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind… Where it all will end, knows God!

The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And [...]

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

The biggest human temptation is … to settle for too little.

“You told me what the first rule of wisdom is,” I said. “What is the second rule?” “That can be answered,” he said. “There are five in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take [...]

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent [...]

The Widow I like this piece. I think you’d like it too. We didn’t very often disagree Back in the days when I sat here with you And knew that you were coming home with me. This is the future. It arrived so fast. When we were young it seemed so far away. Our years [...]

To my extreme mortification, I grow wiser every day.

To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.

As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.

A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fir’d at first Sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts, While from the bounded Level of our Mind, Short Views [...]

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

History does not repeat itself – but it rhymes.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best — make it all up — but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

Cathedral Carol Service Those of us who are not important enough To have places reserved for us And who turned up too late to get a seat at all, Stand in the nave aisles, or perch on stone ledges. We shiver in the draught from the west door. We cannot see the choir, the altar [...]

A Christmas Carol The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world, But here is all aright.) The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are the kings, But here the true hearts are.) The Christ-child lay on [...]

I’Yo Ho! my boys,” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night! Christmas Eve, Dick! Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up!” cried old Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson. . . .” “Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility. “Clear away, [...]

Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

I Saw a Peacock, with a fiery tail, I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail, I saw a Cloud, with Ivy circled round, I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground, I saw a Pismire, swallow up a Whale, I saw a raging Sea, brim full of Ale, I saw a Venice Glass, [...]

Originality exists in every individual becasue each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.

I don’t mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.

Bad art is ‘Wow! Huh?’ Good art is ‘Huh? Wow!

On His Blindness When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, “Doth God [...]

The books I haven’t written are better than the books other people have.

What’s a sundial in the shade?

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Friends are a group of people who share a mutual inability to take each other seriously.

Said of Herbert Morrison: “…he is his own worst enemy” to which Ernest Bevin immediately interjected “Not while I’m alive, he ain’t.”

A secret needs two faces to bounce between; a secret needs to see itself in another pair of eyes.

In Flanders Field In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now [...]

The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person.

Timing Toast Grook on how to char for yourself There’s an art of knowing when, Never try to guess Toast until it smokes and then twenty seconds less.

The Destruction of Sennacherib The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That [...]

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Duties are ours; events are God’s. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes.

Autumn A touch of cold in the Autumn night – I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.

You can’t change anything by fighting or resisting it. You change something by making it obsolete through superior methods.

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

Dreams are maps

A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.

The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist.

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind — even if your voice shakes.

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The Quest Quotient has always interested me more than the Intelligence Quotient.

The Old Man’s Comforts and how he gained them You are old, Father William the young man cried, The few locks which are left you are grey; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man, Now tell me the reason, I pray. In the days of my youth, Father William replied, I remember’d that [...]

Explanation is nothing but condensed descriptions.

Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands: But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me [...]

Hope No faith in the hour of betrayal No scorning of lions’ jaws, No heart of grace in the battle-field, No faith in a faithless cause, No hope in the days of bondage Has ever more valiant shone Than the hope that hopes for a taxi, When the last bus has gone.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny [...]

The main problem with punctuality is that there is rarely anyone there to appreciate it.

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know.

In a great business there is nothing so fatal as cunning management.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The beauty of a move lies not in its’ appearance but in the thought behind it.

Be not a bubble, be solid like God and let all thy worth be within.

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is [...]

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to [...]

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

Instants If I could live again my life, In the next – I’ll try, – to make more mistakes, I won’t try to be so perfect, I’ll be more relaxed, I’ll be more full – than I am now, In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously, I’ll be less hygenic, I’ll take more risks, I’ll [...]

The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time.

The biggest human temptation … is to settle for too little.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.

What did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of about Down Under up for.

I begin [...] with an almost inconceivable assertion: I was born at home. For the benefit of those of you who can’t imagine what the word “home” implies, or what a home could possibly have been like, I should explain that the idea of home is the idea of privacy. But again–what is privacy? You [...]

A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.

Too many young people itch for what they want without scratching for it.

A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist.

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” I shall be asked, “Why were you not Zusya?”

Sir, I am a better judge of mutton than any sheep.

Last Post In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud… but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood run upwards from the slime into its wounds; see lines and lines [...]

I am famous, but I am not well known.

Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.

Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone: Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in our own.

Don’t expect too much and don’t attempt too little.

1) The Three Good Things a) Certainty held in Reserve. b) Unexpected Praise from and Artist. c) Discovery of Nobility in Oneself. 2) The Three Bad Things a) Unworthiness crowned. b) Unconscious Infraction of the the Laws of Behaviour. c) Friendly Condescension of the Imperfectly Educated. 3) The Three Things of both Good and Bad [...]

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is not part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing [...]

The poet who writes “free” verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor – dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles [...]

The best substitute for experience is being sixteen.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

A small task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.

When we were kids we fought in the mock battle With Ned Kelly cap guns and we opened the cold bottle Of Shelley’s lemonade with a Scout belt buckle. We cracked the passion fruit and sipped the honeysuckle. When we were kids we lit the Thundercracker Under the fruit tin and we sucked the all [...]

Person in a street near near Carnegie Hall: “Pardon me sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Arthur Rubinstein: “Practice, practice, practice.”

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.

Hot dogs: feeding the hand that bites it.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.

I’m definitely the best king in England at the moment.

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Clopton’s Law: For every credibility gab, there is a gullibility fill.

Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian between meals.

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron.

He who is not a socialist at 19, has no heart. He who is still a socialist at 30, has no brain.

A Dream In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed- But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past? That holy dream- [...]

He was a poet and hated the approximate.

He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.

The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game.

You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty.

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.

That we may truly say this spoild the state. Youthful counsel!, private gaine, partiail hate.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The Cherry Trees The cherry trees bend over and are shedding, On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed.

Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out … and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like [...]

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse – that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.

To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.

My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

One thing about poetry’s eternally true: The best reminds us of what we forgot we knew.

On The Role Of The Next Century’s Poet Laureate Poetry! Opium of the masses Feed their habit Feed their habit Poetry For the working classes Let ‘em have it Let ‘em have it Poetry Raise your champagne glasses Chitter chat it Chitter chat it Poetry For the lads and lasses Twitter chav it Twitter chav [...]

on the appointment of Carol Ann Duffy as Poet Laureate Where there is discord, may you bring euphony Where there is error, may you bring scansion Where there is doubt, may you bring rhyme And where there are royal weddings May you bring sonnets of sterling sincerity (Or, failing that, limericks.)

The Tiger The tiger, on the other hand, Is kittenish and mild, And makes a pretty playfellow For any little child. And mothers of large families (Who claim to common sense) Will find a tiger well repays The trouble and expense.

I’m a pessimist about probabilities; I’m an optimist about possibilities.

Mutability is our tragedy, but it’s also our hope.

Some other Just Ones a footnote to Borges The printer who sets this page with skill, though he may not admire it. Singers of solo expertise who defer and find harmonies instead. Anyone whose skeleton is susceptible to music. She who, having loved a book or record, instantly passes it on. Whose heart lilts at [...]

The mayor of London was asked by an interviewer about “power”: Q: Does power corrupt A: Power reveals

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.

Substance is a convenient word for a gap in our thoughts.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

of someone’s politics …further to the left than the soup spoon of a referee, perhaps …blinder than a welder’s dog

90% of success is turning up

Admiration, n Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

A Clear Midnight This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.

Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, ‘Listen, mate, “life” has surface noise.’

There is nothing that sharpens a man’s senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

He who tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

1831 Business Failled 1832 Lost job Defeated for state legislature 1833 Failed in business 1836 Had nervous breakdown 1838 Defeated for legislature 1844 Defeated for Congress 1846 Defeated for Congress 1848 Defeated for Congress 1849 Rejected for land officer 1855 Defeated for U.S. Senate 1856 Defeated for nomination for Vice President 1858 Defeated for U.S. [...]

All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.

The Sun Rising Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school-boys and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no [...]

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered And I am pleased In vast quantities it has been remaindered.

There is a world which I alone rule, but it ends at my fingertips.

This you have to understand. There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.

No pressure, no diamonds.

…number not voices, but weigh them.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

He caught glimpses of everything, but saw nothing.

I said: “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces”. In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: “I am a tiger”. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.

The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain.

Between too early and too late, there is never more than a moment.

Printer’s ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while [...]

May you live all the days of your life.

A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.

Trend is not destiny

It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

The Planter’s Daughter When night stirred at sea And the fire brought a crowd in, They say that her beauty Was music in mouth And few in the candlelight Thought her too proud, For the house of the planter Is known by the trees. Men that had seen her Drank deep and were silent, The [...]

‘Are the gods not just?’ ‘Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?’

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutang trying to play the violin.

It turns out we can do this not only practically but also theoretically.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

When I say “Yes”, it does not mean that I agree; it means only that you should go on.

The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them–the ship; and [...]

The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We [...]

Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers.

… he give her a look that you could pour on a waffle.

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while [...]

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.

He who limps is still walking.

A Dirge Rough Wind, that moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, _ Wail, for the world’s wrong!

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy.

Music can be used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot.

Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter. today is the 200th anniversary of Horace Walpole’s first coining of the word Serendipity

Believe in fate but lean forward where fate can see you.

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither [...]

I like relativity and quantum theories Because I don’t understand them And they make me feel as if space shifted About like a swan that can’t settle Refusing to sit still and be measured And as if the atom were an impulsive thing Always changing its mind.

The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.

Asking “who ought to be the boss” is like asking “who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?” Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

“That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling everything “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities”. 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth

After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted.

Further Reflection on Parsley Parsley Is gharsley

If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime.

You know your lover by looking into their eyes and heart. You know your friends by reading, arguing, praying, playing, speaking, etc. with them.

Call alligator long-mouth call alligator saw-mouth call alligator pushy-mouth call alligator scissors-mouth call alligator raggedy-mouth call alligator bumpy-bum call alligator all dem rude word but better wait ….. till you cross river.

I leave this rule for others when I’m dead Be always sure you’re right – THEN GO AHEAD!

Poverty is a bag with a hole at the bottom.

Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.

Ending his career as journalist and politician with a 5 year prison sentence for fraud, Bottomley was approached whilst stitching mailbags by a prison visitor who asked him: ‘Sewing, Bottomley’ to which he simply replied: ‘No, reaping.’

Talking Turkeys Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked An every turkey has a Mum. Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas, Don’t eat it, keep it alive, It could be yu mate, an not on your plate Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on [...]

from The Perils of the Pushy Parents One Christmas in the usual way The school put on a touching play To mark Our Lord’s nativity Young Molly was enthralled to be Elected by her cheering class To play the reasr end of the ASS ‘What DO you mean?’ cried Molly’s mum. ‘They’ve made you act [...]

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Getting caught is the mother of invention.

I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

What One Approves, Another Scorns What one approves, another scorns, and thus his nature each discloses. You find the rosebush full of thorns, I find the thornbush full of roses.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

My obsession with computers (what an infancy they’re in, and how it charms) is a kind of nostalgia for the future. I long to be-half man half-desk.

The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.

Dust Here is dust remembers it was a rose one time and lay in a woman’s hair. Here is dust remembers it was a woman one time and in her hair lay a rose. Oh things one time dust, what else now is it you dream and remember of old days?

on being asked in a restaurant if there was anything he would like the orchestra to play… Dominoes

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

Down the Stream the Swans All Glide Down the stream the swans all glide; It’s quite the cheapest way to ride. Their legs get wet, Their tummies wetter: I think after all The bus is better.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Odes, Book 3, Verse 29: Happy the Man Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul or rain or shine The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are [...]

On Winston Churchill He has devoted the best years of his life to preparing his impromptu speeches.

The Flute Tutor A tooter who tooted a flute tried to tutor two tooters to toot. Said the two to the tooter, “Is it harder to toot, or to tutor two tooters to toot?”

…poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, under unbearable duress and only with the hope that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.

May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

A gentleman’s agreement is an agreement which is not an agreement, made between two people neither of whom are gentlemen, whereby each expects the other to be strictly bound without himself being bound at all.

Causa Belli They read good books, and quote, but never learn a language other than the scream of rocket-burn Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad; elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Eliminate absolutely, positively all extraneous words

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one’s voice.

his stock reply to angry letters: Dear Sir, You may be right. Sincerely yours, H L Mencken

I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a [...]

Days What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Taxes feed the naked and clothe the hungry.

Nietzsche is pietzche But Sartre is smartre.

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forego even ambition when the end is gained – who can say this is not greatness?

Grass Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work- I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place [...]

The secret to winning is very simple: do everything reasonably well and make no mistakes.

They said that it could not be done: With a laugh he went right to it. He tackled the thing that couldn’t be done – And couldn’t do it.

Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don’t ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

We are all guilty of hammering on the knuckles of those who try to climb into our boat.

Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, smashing things up is sometimes very pleasant.

The Diatonic Dittymunch The Diatonic Dittymunch plucked music from the air, He swallowed scores of symphonies and still had space to spare. Sonatas and cantatas slithered sweetly down his throat; He made ballads into salads and consumed them note by note. He ate marches and mazurkas, he ate rhapsodies and reels, Minuets and tarantellas were [...]

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd.

I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from [...]

The Dalliance of the Eagles Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together, The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling [...]

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.

How did the party go in Portman Square? I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster’s party go? Juliet was next me and I do not know.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

Response when asked how he was able to maintain his substantial income. First, I charge a retainer; then I charge a reminder; next I charge a refresher; and then I charge a finisher.

The old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.

Wild Asters In the spring I asked the daisies If his words were true, And the clever, clear-eyed daisies Always knew. Now the fields are brown and barren, Bitter autumn blows, And of all the stupid asters Not one knows.

An inventor is an engineer who doesn’t take his education too seriously.

One Perfect Rose A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet – One perfect rose. I knew the language of the floweret; ‘My fragile leaves,’ it said, ‘his heart enclose.’ Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose. Why [...]

Thou art so true that thoughts of you suffice To make dreams truths and fables histories

Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great [...]

Never refuse a thing till you have the refusal of it.

Heaven’s Haven A nun takes the veil I have desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow. And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of [...]

Bad mistakes provide a man wi’ quick experience.

Every time I fill a vacant position I make ten malcontents and one ingrate.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Autumn There is wind where the rose was, Cold rain where sweet grass was, And clouds like sheep Stream o’er the steep Grey skies where the lark was. Nought warm where your hand was, Nought gold where your hair was, But phantom, forlorn, Beneath the thorn, Your ghost where your face was. Cold wind where [...]