A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
"Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"
- Edgar Allan Poe
EL DORADO
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old,
This knight so bold,
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow;
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be,
This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the mountains
Of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied,--
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
- Edgar Allan Poe
Friday, August 25, 2006
Robert Frost Poetry
BOND AND FREE
"Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about—
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.
On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius’ disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star."
-Robert Frost
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And, sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
-Robert Frost
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake."
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
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 favour 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."
-Robert Frost
GOD'S GARDEN
"God made a beatous garden
With lovely flowers strown,
But one straight, narrow pathway
That was not overgrown.
And to this beauteous garden
He brought mankind to live,
And said: 'To you, my children,
These lovely flowers I give.
Prune ye my vines and fig trees,
With care my flowerets tend,
But keep the pathway open
Your home is at the end.'
Then came another master,
Who did not love mankind,
And planted on the pathway
Gold flowers for them to find.
And mankind saw the bright flowers,
That, glitt'ring in the sun,
Quite hid the thorns of av'rice
That poison blood and bone;
And far off many wandered,
And when life's night came on,
They still were seeking gold flowers,
Lost, helpless and alone.
O, cease to heed the glamour
That blinds your foolish eyes,
Look upward to the glitter
Of stars in God's clear skies.
Their ways are pure and harmless
And will not lead astray,
Bid aid your erring footsteps
To keep the narrow way.
And when the sun shines brightly
Tend flowers that God has given
And keep the pathway open
That leads you on to heaven."
-Robert Frost
INTO MY OWN
"One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they
knew--Only more sure of all I thought was true."
-Robert Frost
RELUCTANCE
"Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or of a season?"
-Robert Frost
"Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about—
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.
On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius’ disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star."
-Robert Frost
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And, sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
-Robert Frost
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake."
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
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 favour 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."
-Robert Frost
GOD'S GARDEN
"God made a beatous garden
With lovely flowers strown,
But one straight, narrow pathway
That was not overgrown.
And to this beauteous garden
He brought mankind to live,
And said: 'To you, my children,
These lovely flowers I give.
Prune ye my vines and fig trees,
With care my flowerets tend,
But keep the pathway open
Your home is at the end.'
Then came another master,
Who did not love mankind,
And planted on the pathway
Gold flowers for them to find.
And mankind saw the bright flowers,
That, glitt'ring in the sun,
Quite hid the thorns of av'rice
That poison blood and bone;
And far off many wandered,
And when life's night came on,
They still were seeking gold flowers,
Lost, helpless and alone.
O, cease to heed the glamour
That blinds your foolish eyes,
Look upward to the glitter
Of stars in God's clear skies.
Their ways are pure and harmless
And will not lead astray,
Bid aid your erring footsteps
To keep the narrow way.
And when the sun shines brightly
Tend flowers that God has given
And keep the pathway open
That leads you on to heaven."
-Robert Frost
INTO MY OWN
"One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they
knew--Only more sure of all I thought was true."
-Robert Frost
RELUCTANCE
"Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or of a season?"
-Robert Frost
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Emily Dickinson Poetry
CERTAINTY
"I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given."
-Emily Dickinson
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH
"Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.
We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labour and my leisure too,
For His Civility--
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--
Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--
Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity--"
-Emily Dickinson
SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST
"Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear."
-Emily Dickinson
I HEARD A FLY BUZZ
"I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,--and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see."
-Emily Dickinson
AFTER GREAT PAIN...
"After great pain a formal feeling comes --
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff heart questions - was it He that bore?
And yesterday - or centuries before?
The feet mechanical go round
A wooden way,
Of ground or air of Ought,
Regardless grown;
A quartz contentment like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived
As freezing persons recollect
The snow --
First chill, then stupor, then
The letting go."
-Emily Dickinson
"I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen meet at night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names."
-Emily Dickinson
"The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
“Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?”
“Because, sir, love is sweet!”
We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee,—
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night’s possibility!"
-Emily Dickinson
"Sleep is supposed to be,
By souls of sanity,
The shutting of the eye.
Sleep is the station grand
Down which on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!
Morn is supposed to be,
By people of degree,
The breaking of the day.
Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity;
One with the banner gay,
One in the red array,—
That is the break of day."
-Emily Dickinson
THE BATTLEFIELD
"They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers goes.
They perished in the seamless grass,—
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face."
-Emily Dickinson
"Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.
Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
I should not fear the fight."
-Emily Dickinson
"Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?
So sailors say, on yesterday,
Just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
And gurgled down and down.
But angels say, on yesterday,
Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o’erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
Exultant, onward sped!"
-Emily Dickinson
THIRST
"We thirst at first,—’t is Nature’s act;
And later, when we die,
A little water supplicate
Of fingers going by.
It intimates the finer want,
Whose adequate supply
Is that great water in the west
Termed immortality."
-Emily Dickinson
"I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given."
-Emily Dickinson
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH
"Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.
We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labour and my leisure too,
For His Civility--
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--
Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--
Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity--"
-Emily Dickinson
SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST
"Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear."
-Emily Dickinson
I HEARD A FLY BUZZ
"I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,--and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see."
-Emily Dickinson
AFTER GREAT PAIN...
"After great pain a formal feeling comes --
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff heart questions - was it He that bore?
And yesterday - or centuries before?
The feet mechanical go round
A wooden way,
Of ground or air of Ought,
Regardless grown;
A quartz contentment like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived
As freezing persons recollect
The snow --
First chill, then stupor, then
The letting go."
-Emily Dickinson
"I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen meet at night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names."
-Emily Dickinson
"The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
“Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?”
“Because, sir, love is sweet!”
We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee,—
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night’s possibility!"
-Emily Dickinson
"Sleep is supposed to be,
By souls of sanity,
The shutting of the eye.
Sleep is the station grand
Down which on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!
Morn is supposed to be,
By people of degree,
The breaking of the day.
Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity;
One with the banner gay,
One in the red array,—
That is the break of day."
-Emily Dickinson
THE BATTLEFIELD
"They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers goes.
They perished in the seamless grass,—
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face."
-Emily Dickinson
"Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.
Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
I should not fear the fight."
-Emily Dickinson
"Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?
So sailors say, on yesterday,
Just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
And gurgled down and down.
But angels say, on yesterday,
Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o’erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
Exultant, onward sped!"
-Emily Dickinson
THIRST
"We thirst at first,—’t is Nature’s act;
And later, when we die,
A little water supplicate
Of fingers going by.
It intimates the finer want,
Whose adequate supply
Is that great water in the west
Termed immortality."
-Emily Dickinson
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Quotes About COURAGE
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
Mark Twain
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it."
Author Unknown
"Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared."
David Ben-Gurion
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
C. S. Lewis
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." Sir Winston Churchill
"Courage is fear that has said its prayers."
Dorothy Bernard
"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."
Raymond Lindquist
"Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace."
Amelia Earhart
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Harold Wilson
"Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount."
Clare Booth Luce
"A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward."
Jean Paul Richter
"Many would be cowards if they had courage enough."
Thomas Fuller
"The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."
Ralph W. Sockman
"The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next."
Mignon McLaughlin
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."
Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird"
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."
Erica Jong
"But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself."
Albert Camus
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
Reinhold Niebuhr
"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was."
Richard L. Evans
"Success is that old ABC -- ability, breaks, and courage."
Charles Luckman
"The man who has strong opinions and always says what he thinks is courageous – and friendless."
Author Unknown
"It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time.
Judith Rossner
"Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away."
Thomas Fuller
Mark Twain
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it."
Author Unknown
"Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared."
David Ben-Gurion
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
C. S. Lewis
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." Sir Winston Churchill
"Courage is fear that has said its prayers."
Dorothy Bernard
"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."
Raymond Lindquist
"Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace."
Amelia Earhart
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Harold Wilson
"Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount."
Clare Booth Luce
"A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward."
Jean Paul Richter
"Many would be cowards if they had courage enough."
Thomas Fuller
"The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."
Ralph W. Sockman
"The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next."
Mignon McLaughlin
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."
Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird"
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."
Erica Jong
"But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself."
Albert Camus
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
Reinhold Niebuhr
"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was."
Richard L. Evans
"Success is that old ABC -- ability, breaks, and courage."
Charles Luckman
"The man who has strong opinions and always says what he thinks is courageous – and friendless."
Author Unknown
"It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time.
Judith Rossner
"Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away."
Thomas Fuller
Quotes About GOD
"There is polish for everything that takes away rust; and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God."
~Mohammad~
"What we believe about God is the most important part of us."
~A.W. Tozer~
"One on God's side is a majority."
~Wendell Phillips~
"An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his belief."
~Franklin P. Jones~
"If there was no God, there would be no atheists."
~G.K. Chesterton
"Nobody talks about God as much, as those who insist that there is no God."
~Heywood Brown~
"An atheist does not find God, for the same reason a thief does not find a policeman."
"The value of persistant prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we finally hear Him."
"If you knew who walks beside you on the way you have chosen, fear would be impossible."
~A Course in Miracles~
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."
~C. S. Lewis~
"God is love, and if you lose yourself in Him, you will find yourself."
"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
~C. S. Lewis~
"We are all pencils in the hand of God."
~Mother Teresa~
"I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen."
~C. S. Lewis~
"God had not promised us a pleasant journey, but a safe arrival."
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much." ~Mother Teresa~
"Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will stregthen you, I will help you. I will up hold you with My victorious right hand."
~Isaiah 41:10~
"I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than to live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is."
~Albert Camus~
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Oh, all right then- have it your way.' "
~C. S. Lewis~
“God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.”
~Meister Eckhart~
~Mohammad~
"What we believe about God is the most important part of us."
~A.W. Tozer~
"One on God's side is a majority."
~Wendell Phillips~
"An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his belief."
~Franklin P. Jones~
"If there was no God, there would be no atheists."
~G.K. Chesterton
"Nobody talks about God as much, as those who insist that there is no God."
~Heywood Brown~
"An atheist does not find God, for the same reason a thief does not find a policeman."
"The value of persistant prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we finally hear Him."
"If you knew who walks beside you on the way you have chosen, fear would be impossible."
~A Course in Miracles~
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."
~C. S. Lewis~
"God is love, and if you lose yourself in Him, you will find yourself."
"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
~C. S. Lewis~
"We are all pencils in the hand of God."
~Mother Teresa~
"I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen."
~C. S. Lewis~
"God had not promised us a pleasant journey, but a safe arrival."
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much." ~Mother Teresa~
"Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will stregthen you, I will help you. I will up hold you with My victorious right hand."
~Isaiah 41:10~
"I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than to live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is."
~Albert Camus~
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Oh, all right then- have it your way.' "
~C. S. Lewis~
“God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.”
~Meister Eckhart~
Alfred Lord Tennyson Poetry
Lines From "IN MEMORIAM"
CXXIII
There rolls the deep where grew the tree,
O earth, what changes thou hast seen!
There, where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows and they flow
From form to form and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All, within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
If ever when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice 'believe no more'
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart,
Stood up and answered ' I have felt.'
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamor made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father is near;
And what I am beheld again
What is and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, molding men."
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
THE LADY OF SHALLOT
"In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining,
Over tower’d Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady Of Shallot.
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeking all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance,
Did she look to Camelot;
And at the closing of the day,
She loosed the chain and down she lay,
The broad stream bore her far away
The Lady Of Shallot.
Lying, robed in snowy white,
That loosely flew to left and right,
The leaves upon her falling light,
Through the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot
And as the boat-head wound along,
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady Of Shallot.
Heard a carol mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn’d to tower’d Camelot;
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady Of Shallot.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high
Silent into Camelot;
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady Of Shallot.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near,
Died the sound of royal cheer,
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights of Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, 'She has a lovely face,
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady Of Shallot.' "
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
CXXIII
There rolls the deep where grew the tree,
O earth, what changes thou hast seen!
There, where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows and they flow
From form to form and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All, within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
If ever when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice 'believe no more'
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart,
Stood up and answered ' I have felt.'
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamor made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father is near;
And what I am beheld again
What is and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, molding men."
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
THE LADY OF SHALLOT
"In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining,
Over tower’d Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady Of Shallot.
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeking all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance,
Did she look to Camelot;
And at the closing of the day,
She loosed the chain and down she lay,
The broad stream bore her far away
The Lady Of Shallot.
Lying, robed in snowy white,
That loosely flew to left and right,
The leaves upon her falling light,
Through the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot
And as the boat-head wound along,
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady Of Shallot.
Heard a carol mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn’d to tower’d Camelot;
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady Of Shallot.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high
Silent into Camelot;
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady Of Shallot.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near,
Died the sound of royal cheer,
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights of Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, 'She has a lovely face,
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady Of Shallot.' "
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ella Wheeler Wilcox Poetry
CONVERSATION
God and I in space alone
and nobody else in view.
"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,
"the earth below and the sky o'er head
and the dead whom once I knew?"
"That was a dream," God smiled and said,
"A dream that seemed to be true.
There were no people, living or dead,
there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;
there was only Myself -- in you."
"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,
"meeting You here this way?
For I have sinned I know full well--
and is there heaven, and is there hell,
and is this the Judgment Day?"
"Nay, those were but dreams,"
the Great God said,
"Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin;
there is no you -- you never have been--
there is nothing at all but Me."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SOLITUDE
"Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life;
And even when you find them,
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind
And look for the virtue behind them.
For the cloudiest night has a hint of light
Somewhere in its shadows hiding;
It is better by far to hunt for a star,
Than the spots on the sun abiding.
The current of life runs ever away
To the bosom of God’s great ocean.
Don’t set your force ‘gainst the river’s course
And think to alter its motion.
Don’t waste a curse on the universe –
Remember it lived before you.
Don’t butt at the storm with your puny form,
But bend and let it go o’er you.
The world will never adjust itself
To suit your whims to the letter.
Some things must go wrong your whole life long,
And the sooner you know it the better.
It is folly to fight with the Infinite,
And go under at last in the wrestle;
The wiser man shapes into God’s plan
As water shapes into a vessel."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
GOING AWAY
"Walking to-day on the Common,
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him,
'Do you know I am going away? '
I had never seen their faces,
May never see them again;
Yet the words the stranger uttered,
Stirred me with nameless pain.
For I knew some heart would miss him,
Would ache at his going away!
And the earth would seem all cheerless
For many and many a day.
No matter how light my spirits,
No matter how glad my heart,
If I hear those two words spoken,
The teardrops always start.
They are so sad and solemn,
So full of a lonely sound;
Like dead leaves rustling downward,
And dropping upon the ground,
Oh, I pity the naked branches,
When the skies are dull and gray,
And the last leaf whispers softly,
'Good-bye, I am going away.'
In the dreary, dripping autumn,
The wings of the flying birds,
As they soar away to the south land,
Seem always to say those words.
Wherever they may be spoken,
They fall with a sob and a sigh;
And heartaches follow the sentence,
'I am going away, Good-bye.'
O God, in Thy blessed Kingdom,
No lips shall ever say,
No ears shall ever harken
To the words 'I am going away.'"
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SMILES
"Smile a little, smile a little,
As you go along,
Not alone when life is pleasant,
But when things go wrong.
Care delights to see you frowning,
Loves to hear you sigh;
Turn a smiling face upon her –
Quick the dame will fly.
Smile a little, smile a little,
All along the road;
Every life must have its burden,
Every heart its load.
Why sit down in gloom and darkness
With your grief to sup?
As you drink Fate’s bitter tonic,
Smile across the cup.
Smile upon the troubled pilgrims
Whom you pass and meet;
Frowns are thorns, and smiles are blossoms
Oft for weary feet.
Do not make the way seem harder
By a sullen face;
Smile a little, smile a little,
Brighten up the place.
Smile upon your undone labour;
Not for one who grieves
O’er his task waits wealth or glory;
He who smiles achieves.
Though you meet with loss and sorrow
In the passing years,
Smile a little, smile a little,
Even through your tears."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
LISTEN
"Whoever you are as you read this,
Whatever your trouble or grief,
I want you to know and to heed this:
The day draweth near with relief.
No sorrow, no woe is unending,
Though heaven seems voiceless and dumb;
So sure as your cry is ascending,
So surely an answer will come.
Whatever temptation is near you,
Whose eyes on this simple verse fall;
Remember good angels will hear you
And help you to stand, if you call.
Though stunned with despair I beseech you,
Whatever your losses, your need,
Believe, when these printed words reach you,
Believe you were born to succeed.
You are stronger, I tell you, this minute,
Than any unfortunate fate!
And the coveted prize - you can win it;
While life lasts 'tis never too late!"
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I TOLD YOU
"I told you the winter would go, love,
I told you the winter would go,
That he'd flee in shame when the south wind came,
And you smiled when I told you so.
You said the blustering fellow
Would never yield to a breeze,
That his cold, icy breath had frozen to death
The flowers, the birds, and trees.
And I told you the snow would melt, love,
In the passionate glance o' the sun;
And the leaves o' the trees, and the flowers and bees,
Would come back again, one by one.
That the great, gray clouds would vanish,
And the sky turn tender and blue;
And the sweet birds would sing, and talk of the spring
And, love, it has all come true.
I told you that sorrow would fade, love,
And you would forget half your pain;
That the sweet bird of song would waken ere long,
And sing in your bosom again;
That hope would creep out of the shadows,
And back to its nest in your heart,
And gladness would come, and find its old home,
And that sorrow at length would depart.
I told you that grief seldom killed, love,
Though the heart might seem dead for awhile.
But the world is so bright, and full of warm light
That 'twould waken at length, in its smile.
Ah, love! was I not a true prophet?
There's a sweet happy smile on your face;
Your sadness has flown - the snow-drift is gone,
And the buttercups bloom in its place."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SLIPPING AWAY
Slipping away---slipping away!
Out of our brief year slips the May;
And Winter lingers, and Summer flies;
And Sorrow abideth, and Pleasure dies;
And the days are short, and the nights are long;
And little is right, and much is wrong.
Slipping away is the Summer-time;
It has lost its rhythm and lilting rhyme---
For the grace goes out of the day so soon,
And the tired head aches in the glare of noon,
And the way seems long to the hills that lie
Under the calm of the western sky.
Slipping away are the friends whose worth
Lent a glow to the sad old earth:
One by one they slip from our sight;
One by one their graves gleam white;
Or we count them lost by the crueller death
Of a trust betrayed, or a murdered faith.
Slipping away are the hopes that made
Bliss out of sorrow, and sun out of shade;
Slipping away is our hold on life;
And out of the struggle and wearing strife,
From joys that diminish, and woes that increase,
We are slipping away to the shores of Peace.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SONGS OF LOVE AND THE SEA
I
When first we met (the Sea and I),
Like one before a King
I stood in awe; nor felt nor saw
The sun, the winds, the earth, the sky
Or any other thing.
God's Universe to me,
Was just the Sea.
When next we met, the lordly Main
Played but a courtier's part;
Crowned Queen was I; and earth and sky,
And sun and sea were my domain,
Since love was in my heart.
Before, beyond, above,
Was only Love.
II
Love built me on a little rock,
A little house of pine;
At first, the Sea
Beat angrily
About that house of mine;
(That dear, dear home of mine).
But when it turned to go away
Beyond the sandy track,
Down o'er its wall
The house would call,
Until the Sea came back;
(It always hurried back).
And now the two have grown so fond,
(Oh, breathe no word of this),
When clouds hang low,
And east winds blow,
They meet and kiss and kiss;
(At night, I hear them kiss).
III
No man can understand the Sea until
He knows all passions of the senses, all
The great emotions of the heart, and each
Exalted aspiration of the soul.
Then may he sit beside the sea and say:
"I, too, have flung myself against the rocks,
And kissed their flinty brows with no return,
And fallen spent upon unfeeling sands.
I, too, have gone forth yearning, to far shores,
Seeking that something which would bring content,
And finding only what I took away;
And I have looked up through the veil of skies
When all the world was still, and understood
That I am one with Nature and with God."
IV
The Dawn was flying from the Night;
Swift as the wind she sped;
Her hair was like a fleece of light;
Her cheeks were warm and red.
All passion pale, the Night pursued;
She fled away, away;
And in her garments, rainbow hued,
She gained the peak of day.
And then, all shaken with alarms,
She leaped down from its crest
Into the Sea's uplifted arms,
And swooned upon his breast.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
God and I in space alone
and nobody else in view.
"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,
"the earth below and the sky o'er head
and the dead whom once I knew?"
"That was a dream," God smiled and said,
"A dream that seemed to be true.
There were no people, living or dead,
there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;
there was only Myself -- in you."
"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,
"meeting You here this way?
For I have sinned I know full well--
and is there heaven, and is there hell,
and is this the Judgment Day?"
"Nay, those were but dreams,"
the Great God said,
"Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin;
there is no you -- you never have been--
there is nothing at all but Me."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SOLITUDE
"Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life;
And even when you find them,
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind
And look for the virtue behind them.
For the cloudiest night has a hint of light
Somewhere in its shadows hiding;
It is better by far to hunt for a star,
Than the spots on the sun abiding.
The current of life runs ever away
To the bosom of God’s great ocean.
Don’t set your force ‘gainst the river’s course
And think to alter its motion.
Don’t waste a curse on the universe –
Remember it lived before you.
Don’t butt at the storm with your puny form,
But bend and let it go o’er you.
The world will never adjust itself
To suit your whims to the letter.
Some things must go wrong your whole life long,
And the sooner you know it the better.
It is folly to fight with the Infinite,
And go under at last in the wrestle;
The wiser man shapes into God’s plan
As water shapes into a vessel."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
GOING AWAY
"Walking to-day on the Common,
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him,
'Do you know I am going away? '
I had never seen their faces,
May never see them again;
Yet the words the stranger uttered,
Stirred me with nameless pain.
For I knew some heart would miss him,
Would ache at his going away!
And the earth would seem all cheerless
For many and many a day.
No matter how light my spirits,
No matter how glad my heart,
If I hear those two words spoken,
The teardrops always start.
They are so sad and solemn,
So full of a lonely sound;
Like dead leaves rustling downward,
And dropping upon the ground,
Oh, I pity the naked branches,
When the skies are dull and gray,
And the last leaf whispers softly,
'Good-bye, I am going away.'
In the dreary, dripping autumn,
The wings of the flying birds,
As they soar away to the south land,
Seem always to say those words.
Wherever they may be spoken,
They fall with a sob and a sigh;
And heartaches follow the sentence,
'I am going away, Good-bye.'
O God, in Thy blessed Kingdom,
No lips shall ever say,
No ears shall ever harken
To the words 'I am going away.'"
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SMILES
"Smile a little, smile a little,
As you go along,
Not alone when life is pleasant,
But when things go wrong.
Care delights to see you frowning,
Loves to hear you sigh;
Turn a smiling face upon her –
Quick the dame will fly.
Smile a little, smile a little,
All along the road;
Every life must have its burden,
Every heart its load.
Why sit down in gloom and darkness
With your grief to sup?
As you drink Fate’s bitter tonic,
Smile across the cup.
Smile upon the troubled pilgrims
Whom you pass and meet;
Frowns are thorns, and smiles are blossoms
Oft for weary feet.
Do not make the way seem harder
By a sullen face;
Smile a little, smile a little,
Brighten up the place.
Smile upon your undone labour;
Not for one who grieves
O’er his task waits wealth or glory;
He who smiles achieves.
Though you meet with loss and sorrow
In the passing years,
Smile a little, smile a little,
Even through your tears."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
LISTEN
"Whoever you are as you read this,
Whatever your trouble or grief,
I want you to know and to heed this:
The day draweth near with relief.
No sorrow, no woe is unending,
Though heaven seems voiceless and dumb;
So sure as your cry is ascending,
So surely an answer will come.
Whatever temptation is near you,
Whose eyes on this simple verse fall;
Remember good angels will hear you
And help you to stand, if you call.
Though stunned with despair I beseech you,
Whatever your losses, your need,
Believe, when these printed words reach you,
Believe you were born to succeed.
You are stronger, I tell you, this minute,
Than any unfortunate fate!
And the coveted prize - you can win it;
While life lasts 'tis never too late!"
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I TOLD YOU
"I told you the winter would go, love,
I told you the winter would go,
That he'd flee in shame when the south wind came,
And you smiled when I told you so.
You said the blustering fellow
Would never yield to a breeze,
That his cold, icy breath had frozen to death
The flowers, the birds, and trees.
And I told you the snow would melt, love,
In the passionate glance o' the sun;
And the leaves o' the trees, and the flowers and bees,
Would come back again, one by one.
That the great, gray clouds would vanish,
And the sky turn tender and blue;
And the sweet birds would sing, and talk of the spring
And, love, it has all come true.
I told you that sorrow would fade, love,
And you would forget half your pain;
That the sweet bird of song would waken ere long,
And sing in your bosom again;
That hope would creep out of the shadows,
And back to its nest in your heart,
And gladness would come, and find its old home,
And that sorrow at length would depart.
I told you that grief seldom killed, love,
Though the heart might seem dead for awhile.
But the world is so bright, and full of warm light
That 'twould waken at length, in its smile.
Ah, love! was I not a true prophet?
There's a sweet happy smile on your face;
Your sadness has flown - the snow-drift is gone,
And the buttercups bloom in its place."
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SLIPPING AWAY
Slipping away---slipping away!
Out of our brief year slips the May;
And Winter lingers, and Summer flies;
And Sorrow abideth, and Pleasure dies;
And the days are short, and the nights are long;
And little is right, and much is wrong.
Slipping away is the Summer-time;
It has lost its rhythm and lilting rhyme---
For the grace goes out of the day so soon,
And the tired head aches in the glare of noon,
And the way seems long to the hills that lie
Under the calm of the western sky.
Slipping away are the friends whose worth
Lent a glow to the sad old earth:
One by one they slip from our sight;
One by one their graves gleam white;
Or we count them lost by the crueller death
Of a trust betrayed, or a murdered faith.
Slipping away are the hopes that made
Bliss out of sorrow, and sun out of shade;
Slipping away is our hold on life;
And out of the struggle and wearing strife,
From joys that diminish, and woes that increase,
We are slipping away to the shores of Peace.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
SONGS OF LOVE AND THE SEA
I
When first we met (the Sea and I),
Like one before a King
I stood in awe; nor felt nor saw
The sun, the winds, the earth, the sky
Or any other thing.
God's Universe to me,
Was just the Sea.
When next we met, the lordly Main
Played but a courtier's part;
Crowned Queen was I; and earth and sky,
And sun and sea were my domain,
Since love was in my heart.
Before, beyond, above,
Was only Love.
II
Love built me on a little rock,
A little house of pine;
At first, the Sea
Beat angrily
About that house of mine;
(That dear, dear home of mine).
But when it turned to go away
Beyond the sandy track,
Down o'er its wall
The house would call,
Until the Sea came back;
(It always hurried back).
And now the two have grown so fond,
(Oh, breathe no word of this),
When clouds hang low,
And east winds blow,
They meet and kiss and kiss;
(At night, I hear them kiss).
III
No man can understand the Sea until
He knows all passions of the senses, all
The great emotions of the heart, and each
Exalted aspiration of the soul.
Then may he sit beside the sea and say:
"I, too, have flung myself against the rocks,
And kissed their flinty brows with no return,
And fallen spent upon unfeeling sands.
I, too, have gone forth yearning, to far shores,
Seeking that something which would bring content,
And finding only what I took away;
And I have looked up through the veil of skies
When all the world was still, and understood
That I am one with Nature and with God."
IV
The Dawn was flying from the Night;
Swift as the wind she sped;
Her hair was like a fleece of light;
Her cheeks were warm and red.
All passion pale, the Night pursued;
She fled away, away;
And in her garments, rainbow hued,
She gained the peak of day.
And then, all shaken with alarms,
She leaped down from its crest
Into the Sea's uplifted arms,
And swooned upon his breast.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Winston Churchill Quotes
"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
Sir Winston Churchill
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Sir Winston Churchill
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
Sir Winston Churchill
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."
Sir Winston Churchill
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."
Sir Winston Churchill
"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning."
Sir Winston Churchill
"When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home."
Sir Winston Churchill
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Sir Winston Churchill
"There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
Sir Winston Churchill
"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."
Sir Winston Churchill
"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."
Sir Winston Churchill
"For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else."
Sir Winston Churchill
"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."
Sir Winston Churchill
"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Sir Winston Churchill
"I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.'"
Sir Winston Churchill
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Sir Winston Churchill
"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."
Sir Winston Churchill
"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."
Sir Winston Churchill
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
Sir Winston Churchill
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Sir Winston Churchill
"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself."
Sir Winston Churchill
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
Sir Winston Churchill
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Sir Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Churchill
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Sir Winston Churchill
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
Sir Winston Churchill
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."
Sir Winston Churchill
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."
Sir Winston Churchill
"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning."
Sir Winston Churchill
"When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home."
Sir Winston Churchill
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Sir Winston Churchill
"There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
Sir Winston Churchill
"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."
Sir Winston Churchill
"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."
Sir Winston Churchill
"For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else."
Sir Winston Churchill
"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."
Sir Winston Churchill
"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Sir Winston Churchill
"I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.'"
Sir Winston Churchill
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Sir Winston Churchill
"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."
Sir Winston Churchill
"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."
Sir Winston Churchill
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
Sir Winston Churchill
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Sir Winston Churchill
"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself."
Sir Winston Churchill
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
Sir Winston Churchill
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Sir Winston Churchill
Mark Twain Quotes
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894)
"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
Mark Twain
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Mark Twain
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
Mark Twain
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Mark Twain
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
Mark Twain
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Mark Twain (attributed)
"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
Mark Twain
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said 'I don't know.'"
Mark Twain
"Always tell the truth. That way, you'll never have to remember what you said last time."
Mark Twain
"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to stop and reconsider."
Mark Twain
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain (attributed)
"In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."
Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Chapter 2
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Mark Twain
"Somehow, we are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess."
Mark Twain
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
Mark Twain
"Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
Mark Twain
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Mark Twain
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
Mark Twain
"When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself."
Mark Twain
"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge."
Mark Twain
"[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
Mark Twain
"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
Mark Twain
"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."
Mark Twain
"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
Mark Twain
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
Mark Twain
"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."
Mark Twain
"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)"
Mark Twain (attributed)
Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894)
"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
Mark Twain
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Mark Twain
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
Mark Twain
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Mark Twain
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
Mark Twain
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Mark Twain (attributed)
"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
Mark Twain
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said 'I don't know.'"
Mark Twain
"Always tell the truth. That way, you'll never have to remember what you said last time."
Mark Twain
"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to stop and reconsider."
Mark Twain
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain (attributed)
"In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."
Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Chapter 2
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Mark Twain
"Somehow, we are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess."
Mark Twain
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
Mark Twain
"Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
Mark Twain
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Mark Twain
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
Mark Twain
"When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself."
Mark Twain
"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge."
Mark Twain
"[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
Mark Twain
"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
Mark Twain
"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."
Mark Twain
"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
Mark Twain
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
Mark Twain
"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."
Mark Twain
"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)"
Mark Twain (attributed)
Friday, May 26, 2006
TEARS OF THE SAINTS by Leeland
object width="425" height="355">
TEARS OF THE SAINTS by Leeland
There are (Em)many prodigal sons
(There are schools full of hatred)
On our (C)city streets they run
(Even churches have forsaken )
Searching for (D)shelter
(Love and mercy)
There are (Em)homes broken down
(May we see this generation)
People’s (C)hopes have fallen to the ground
(In it’s state of desperation)
From (D)failures
(For Your glory)
This is an (C)emergency!
CHORUS:
There are (C)tears from the saints
(And all your children will stretch out their hands)
For the (G)lost and un(D)saved
(And pick up the crippled man)
We’re crying for them (Am)come back home
(Father, we will lead them home)
We’re crying for them (C)come back (D)home (Em)
(Father, we will lead them home)
TEARS OF THE SAINTS by Leeland
There are (Em)many prodigal sons
(There are schools full of hatred)
On our (C)city streets they run
(Even churches have forsaken )
Searching for (D)shelter
(Love and mercy)
There are (Em)homes broken down
(May we see this generation)
People’s (C)hopes have fallen to the ground
(In it’s state of desperation)
From (D)failures
(For Your glory)
This is an (C)emergency!
CHORUS:
There are (C)tears from the saints
(And all your children will stretch out their hands)
For the (G)lost and un(D)saved
(And pick up the crippled man)
We’re crying for them (Am)come back home
(Father, we will lead them home)
We’re crying for them (C)come back (D)home (Em)
(Father, we will lead them home)
THE CALL by Regina Spektor
THE CALL by Regina Spektor
(Capo 3, Key = Bb)
It (G)started out as a (D)feeling
Which then (Em)grew into a (C)hope
Which then (G)turned into a (D)quiet thought
Which then (Em)turned into a quiet (C)word
And (D)then that word grew louder and louder
(G)'Til it was a battle (Em)cry
(C)I'll come back
When you (D)call (G)me
(G)No need to say good(D)bye
Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light
You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say goodbye
You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say goodbye
Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget
Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
'Til they're before your eyes
You'll come back
When they call you
No need to say goodbye
You'll come back
When they call you
No need to say goodbye
Those are the chords that worked for me. I can't sing the note she uses for "goodbye" in the second chorus, so I just play it with "D" but I think that Em is probably more correct.
Monday, January 16, 2006
JRR Tolkien Poetry
AT THE GREY HAVENS
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.
Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that i shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!
-JRR Tolkien
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF LOST PLAY (Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva)
We knew that land once, You and I,
and once we wandered there
in the long days now long gone by,
a dark child and a fair.
Was it on the paths of firelight thought
in winter cold and white,
or in the blue-spun twilit hours
of little early tucked-up beds
in drowsy summer night,
that you and I in Sleep went down
to meet each other there,
your dark hair on your white nightgown
and mine was tangled fair?
We wandered shyly hand in hand,
small footprints in the golden sand,
and gathered pearls and shells in pails,
while all about the nightingales
were singing in the trees.
We dug for silver with our spades,
and caught the sparkle of the seas,
then ran ashore to greenlit glades,
and found the warm and winding lane
that now we cannot find again,
between tall whispering trees.
The air was neither night nor day,
an ever-eve of gloaming light,
when first there glimmered into sight
the Little House of Play.
New-built it was, yet very old,
white, and thatched with straws of gold,
and pierced with peeping lattices
that looked toward the sea;
and our own children's garden-plots
were there: our own forgetmenots,
red daisies, cress and mustard,
and radishes for tea.
There all the borders, trimmed with box,
were filled with favourite flowers, with phlox,
with lupins, pinks, and hollyhocks,
beneath a red may-tree;
and all the gardens full of folk
that their own little language spoke,
but not to You and Me.
For some had silver watering-cans
and watered all their gowns,
or sprayed each other; some laid plans
to build their houses, little towns
and dwellings in the trees.
And some were clambering on the roof;
some crooning lonely and aloof;
some dancing round the fairy-rings
all garlanded in daisy-strings,
while some upon their knees
before a little white-robed king
crowned with marigold would sing
their rhymes of long ago.
But side by side a little pair
with heads together, mingled hair,
went walking to and fro
still hand in hand; and what they said,
ere Waking far apart them led,
that only we now know.
-JRR Tolkien
ONCE UPON A DAY (by Tom Bombadil)
Once upon a day on the fields of May
there was snow in the summer where the blossom lay;
the buttercups tall sent up their light
in a stream of gold, and wide and white
there opened in the green grass-skies
the earth-stars with their steady eyes
watching the Sun climb up and down.
Goldberry was there with a wild-rose crown,
Goldberry was there in a lady-smock
blowing away a dandelion clock,
stooping over a lily-pool
and twiddling the water green and cool
to see it sparkle round her hand:
once upon a time in elvish land.
Once upon a night in the cockshut light
the grass was grey but the dew was white;
shadows were dark, and the Sun was gone,
the earth-stars shut, but the high stars shone,
one to another winking their eyes
as they waited for the Moon to rise.
Up he came, and on leaf and grass
his white beams turned to twinkling glass,
and silver dripped from stem and stalk
down to where the lintips walk
through the grass-forests gathering dew.
Tom was there without boot or shoe,
with moonshine wetting his big, brown toes:
once upon a time, the story goes.
Once upon a moon on the brink of June
a-dewing the lintips went too soon.
Tom stopped and listenes, and down he knelt:
"Ha! Little lads! So it was you I smelt?
What a mousy smell! Well, the dew is sweet,
so drink it up, but mind my feet!"
The lintips laughed and stole away,
but old Tom said: "I wish they'd stay!
The only things that won't talk to me,
say what they do or what they be.
I wonder what they have got to hide?
Down from the Moon maybe they slide,
or come in star-winks, I don't know:"
once upon a time and long ago.
THE SEA-BELL (FRODO'S DREME)
I walked by the sea, and there came to me,
as a star-beam on the wet sand,
a white shell like a sea-bell;
trembling it lay in my hand.
In my fingers shaken I heard waken
a ding within, by a harbour bar
a buoy swinging, a call ringing
over endless seas, faint now and far.
Then I saw a boat silently float
on the night-tide, empty and grey.
'It is later than late! Why do we wait?'
I leapt in and cried: 'Bear me away!'
It bore me away, wetted with spray,
wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep,
to a forgotten strand in a strange land.
In the twilight beyond the deep
I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell,
dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar
on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef;
and at last I came to a long shore.
White it glimmered, and the sea simmered
with star-mirrors in a silver net;
cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone
in the moon-foam were gleaming wet.
Glittering sand slid through my hand,
dust of pearl and jewel-grist,
trumpets of opal, roses of coral,
flutes of green and amethyst.
But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves,
weed-curtained, dark and grey;
a cold air stirred in my hair,
and the light waned, as I hurried away.
Down from a hill ran a green rill;
its water I drank to my heart's ease.
Up its fountain-stair to a country fair
of ever-eve I came, far from the seas,
climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows:
flowers lay there like fallen stars,
and on a blue pool, glassy and cool,
like floating moons the nenuphars.
Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping
by a slow river of rippling weeds;
gladdon-swords guarded the fords,
and green spears, and arrow-reeds.
There was echo of song all the evening long
down in the valley; many a thing
running to and fro: hares white as snow,
voles out of holes; moths on the wing
with lantern-eyes; in quiet surprise
brocks were staring out of dark doors.
I heard dancing there, music in the air,
feet going quick on the green floors.
But whenever I came it was ever the same:
the feet fled, and all was still;
never a greeting, only the fleeting
pipes, voices, horns on the hill.
Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves
I made me a mantle of jewel-green,
a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold;
my eyes shone like the star-sheen.
With flowers crowned I stood on a mound,
and shrill as a call at cock-crow
proudly I cried: 'Why do you hide?
Why do none speak, wherever I go?
Here now I stand, king of this land,
with gladdon-sword and reed-mace.
Answer my call! Come forth all!
Speak to me words! Show me a face!'
Black came a cloud as a night-shroud.
Like a dark mole groping I went,
to the ground falling, on my hands crawling
with eyes blind and my back bent.
I crept to a wood: silent it stood
in its dead leaves, bare were its boughs.
There must I sit, wandering in wit,
while owls slept in their hollow house.
For a year and a day there must I stay:
beetles were tapping in the old trees,
spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving
puffballs loomed about my knees.
At last there came light in my long night,
and I saw my hair hanging grey.
'Bent though I be, I must find the sea!
I have lost myself, and I know not the way,
but let me be gone!' Then I stumbled on;
like a hunting bat shadow was over me;
in my ears dinned a withering wind,
and with ragged briars I tried to cover me.
My hands were torn and my knees worn,
and years were heavy upon my back,
when the rain in my face took a salt taste,
and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack.
Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing;
I heard voices in cold caves,
seals barking, and rocks snarling,
and in spout-holes the gulping of waves.
Winter came fast; into a mist I passed,
to land's end my years I bore;
snow was in the air, ice in my hair,
darkness was lying on the last shore.
There still afloat waited the boat,
in the tide lifting, its prow tossing.
Weary I lay, as it bore me away,
the waves climbing, the seas crossing,
passing old hulls clustered with gulls
and great ships laden with light,
coming to haven, dark as a raven,
silent as snow, deep in the night.
Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered,
roads were empty. I sat by a door,
and where drizzling rain poured down a drain
I cast away all that I bore:
in my clutching hand some grains of sand,
and a sea-shell silent and dead.
Never will my ear that bell hear,
never my feet that shore tread
Never again, as in sad lane,
in blind alley and in long street
ragged I walk. To myself I talk;
for still they speak not, men that I meet.
-JRR Tolkien
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.
Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that i shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!
-JRR Tolkien
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF LOST PLAY (Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva)
We knew that land once, You and I,
and once we wandered there
in the long days now long gone by,
a dark child and a fair.
Was it on the paths of firelight thought
in winter cold and white,
or in the blue-spun twilit hours
of little early tucked-up beds
in drowsy summer night,
that you and I in Sleep went down
to meet each other there,
your dark hair on your white nightgown
and mine was tangled fair?
We wandered shyly hand in hand,
small footprints in the golden sand,
and gathered pearls and shells in pails,
while all about the nightingales
were singing in the trees.
We dug for silver with our spades,
and caught the sparkle of the seas,
then ran ashore to greenlit glades,
and found the warm and winding lane
that now we cannot find again,
between tall whispering trees.
The air was neither night nor day,
an ever-eve of gloaming light,
when first there glimmered into sight
the Little House of Play.
New-built it was, yet very old,
white, and thatched with straws of gold,
and pierced with peeping lattices
that looked toward the sea;
and our own children's garden-plots
were there: our own forgetmenots,
red daisies, cress and mustard,
and radishes for tea.
There all the borders, trimmed with box,
were filled with favourite flowers, with phlox,
with lupins, pinks, and hollyhocks,
beneath a red may-tree;
and all the gardens full of folk
that their own little language spoke,
but not to You and Me.
For some had silver watering-cans
and watered all their gowns,
or sprayed each other; some laid plans
to build their houses, little towns
and dwellings in the trees.
And some were clambering on the roof;
some crooning lonely and aloof;
some dancing round the fairy-rings
all garlanded in daisy-strings,
while some upon their knees
before a little white-robed king
crowned with marigold would sing
their rhymes of long ago.
But side by side a little pair
with heads together, mingled hair,
went walking to and fro
still hand in hand; and what they said,
ere Waking far apart them led,
that only we now know.
-JRR Tolkien
ONCE UPON A DAY (by Tom Bombadil)
Once upon a day on the fields of May
there was snow in the summer where the blossom lay;
the buttercups tall sent up their light
in a stream of gold, and wide and white
there opened in the green grass-skies
the earth-stars with their steady eyes
watching the Sun climb up and down.
Goldberry was there with a wild-rose crown,
Goldberry was there in a lady-smock
blowing away a dandelion clock,
stooping over a lily-pool
and twiddling the water green and cool
to see it sparkle round her hand:
once upon a time in elvish land.
Once upon a night in the cockshut light
the grass was grey but the dew was white;
shadows were dark, and the Sun was gone,
the earth-stars shut, but the high stars shone,
one to another winking their eyes
as they waited for the Moon to rise.
Up he came, and on leaf and grass
his white beams turned to twinkling glass,
and silver dripped from stem and stalk
down to where the lintips walk
through the grass-forests gathering dew.
Tom was there without boot or shoe,
with moonshine wetting his big, brown toes:
once upon a time, the story goes.
Once upon a moon on the brink of June
a-dewing the lintips went too soon.
Tom stopped and listenes, and down he knelt:
"Ha! Little lads! So it was you I smelt?
What a mousy smell! Well, the dew is sweet,
so drink it up, but mind my feet!"
The lintips laughed and stole away,
but old Tom said: "I wish they'd stay!
The only things that won't talk to me,
say what they do or what they be.
I wonder what they have got to hide?
Down from the Moon maybe they slide,
or come in star-winks, I don't know:"
once upon a time and long ago.
THE SEA-BELL (FRODO'S DREME)
I walked by the sea, and there came to me,
as a star-beam on the wet sand,
a white shell like a sea-bell;
trembling it lay in my hand.
In my fingers shaken I heard waken
a ding within, by a harbour bar
a buoy swinging, a call ringing
over endless seas, faint now and far.
Then I saw a boat silently float
on the night-tide, empty and grey.
'It is later than late! Why do we wait?'
I leapt in and cried: 'Bear me away!'
It bore me away, wetted with spray,
wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep,
to a forgotten strand in a strange land.
In the twilight beyond the deep
I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell,
dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar
on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef;
and at last I came to a long shore.
White it glimmered, and the sea simmered
with star-mirrors in a silver net;
cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone
in the moon-foam were gleaming wet.
Glittering sand slid through my hand,
dust of pearl and jewel-grist,
trumpets of opal, roses of coral,
flutes of green and amethyst.
But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves,
weed-curtained, dark and grey;
a cold air stirred in my hair,
and the light waned, as I hurried away.
Down from a hill ran a green rill;
its water I drank to my heart's ease.
Up its fountain-stair to a country fair
of ever-eve I came, far from the seas,
climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows:
flowers lay there like fallen stars,
and on a blue pool, glassy and cool,
like floating moons the nenuphars.
Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping
by a slow river of rippling weeds;
gladdon-swords guarded the fords,
and green spears, and arrow-reeds.
There was echo of song all the evening long
down in the valley; many a thing
running to and fro: hares white as snow,
voles out of holes; moths on the wing
with lantern-eyes; in quiet surprise
brocks were staring out of dark doors.
I heard dancing there, music in the air,
feet going quick on the green floors.
But whenever I came it was ever the same:
the feet fled, and all was still;
never a greeting, only the fleeting
pipes, voices, horns on the hill.
Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves
I made me a mantle of jewel-green,
a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold;
my eyes shone like the star-sheen.
With flowers crowned I stood on a mound,
and shrill as a call at cock-crow
proudly I cried: 'Why do you hide?
Why do none speak, wherever I go?
Here now I stand, king of this land,
with gladdon-sword and reed-mace.
Answer my call! Come forth all!
Speak to me words! Show me a face!'
Black came a cloud as a night-shroud.
Like a dark mole groping I went,
to the ground falling, on my hands crawling
with eyes blind and my back bent.
I crept to a wood: silent it stood
in its dead leaves, bare were its boughs.
There must I sit, wandering in wit,
while owls slept in their hollow house.
For a year and a day there must I stay:
beetles were tapping in the old trees,
spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving
puffballs loomed about my knees.
At last there came light in my long night,
and I saw my hair hanging grey.
'Bent though I be, I must find the sea!
I have lost myself, and I know not the way,
but let me be gone!' Then I stumbled on;
like a hunting bat shadow was over me;
in my ears dinned a withering wind,
and with ragged briars I tried to cover me.
My hands were torn and my knees worn,
and years were heavy upon my back,
when the rain in my face took a salt taste,
and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack.
Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing;
I heard voices in cold caves,
seals barking, and rocks snarling,
and in spout-holes the gulping of waves.
Winter came fast; into a mist I passed,
to land's end my years I bore;
snow was in the air, ice in my hair,
darkness was lying on the last shore.
There still afloat waited the boat,
in the tide lifting, its prow tossing.
Weary I lay, as it bore me away,
the waves climbing, the seas crossing,
passing old hulls clustered with gulls
and great ships laden with light,
coming to haven, dark as a raven,
silent as snow, deep in the night.
Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered,
roads were empty. I sat by a door,
and where drizzling rain poured down a drain
I cast away all that I bore:
in my clutching hand some grains of sand,
and a sea-shell silent and dead.
Never will my ear that bell hear,
never my feet that shore tread
Never again, as in sad lane,
in blind alley and in long street
ragged I walk. To myself I talk;
for still they speak not, men that I meet.
-JRR Tolkien
A. E. Housman Poetry
My dreams are of a field afar
And blood and smoke and shot.
There in their graves my comrades are,
In my grave I am not.
I too was taught the trade of man
And spelt the lesson plain;
But they, when I forgot and ran,
Remembered and remain.
-A. E. Housman
I did not lose my heart in summer's even,
When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.
I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight, and took it striking
And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.
-A. E. Housman
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
-A. E. Housman
Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-A. E. Housman
You smile upon your friend to-day,
To-day his ills are over;
You hearken to the lover's say,
And happy is the lover.
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never;
I shall have lived a little while
Before I die for ever.
-A. E. Housman
And blood and smoke and shot.
There in their graves my comrades are,
In my grave I am not.
I too was taught the trade of man
And spelt the lesson plain;
But they, when I forgot and ran,
Remembered and remain.
-A. E. Housman
I did not lose my heart in summer's even,
When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.
I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight, and took it striking
And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.
-A. E. Housman
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
-A. E. Housman
Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-A. E. Housman
You smile upon your friend to-day,
To-day his ills are over;
You hearken to the lover's say,
And happy is the lover.
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never;
I shall have lived a little while
Before I die for ever.
-A. E. Housman
C.S. Lewis Quotes
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
C. S. Lewis
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C. S. Lewis
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
C. S. Lewis
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C. S. Lewis
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
C. S. Lewis
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
C. S. Lewis
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man just a cleverer devil.
C. S. Lewis
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
C. S. Lewis
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.
C. S. Lewis
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
C. S. Lewis
It is hard to have patience with people who say, "There is no death" or "Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is, matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
C. S. Lewis
It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.
C. S. Lewis
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
C. S. Lewis
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Oh, all right then- have it your way!'
C. S. Lewis
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
C. S. Lewis, 'The Pilgrim's Regress'
Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. Lewis, A preface to "Paradise Lost"
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
C. S. Lewis
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
C. S. Lewis,
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war...Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest....
C. S. Lewis
People often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
C. S. Lewis
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them - never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C. S. Lewis
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
C. S. Lewis
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. In those, we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
C. S. Lewis
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
C. S. Lewis
No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.
C. S. Lewis
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law that overarches rulers and ruled alike.
C. S. Lewis
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
C.S. Lewis,
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
C.S. Lewis
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.
C. S. Lewis
I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen.
C. S. Lewis
A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered.
C. S. Lewis
A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional... values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.
C. S. Lewis
This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people.
C. S. Lewis
It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.
C. S. Lewis
Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.
C. S. Lewis
Pride is a spiritual Cancer: It eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
C. S. Lewis
When you reach the thing you were desiring, if it doesn't satisfy you, it was not what you were desiring.
C. S. Lewis
You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You do have a body.
C. S. Lewis
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
C. S. Lewis
Nothing is beautiful except the abnormal; and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C. S. Lewis
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
C. S. Lewis
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C. S. Lewis
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
C. S. Lewis
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
C. S. Lewis
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man just a cleverer devil.
C. S. Lewis
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
C. S. Lewis
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.
C. S. Lewis
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
C. S. Lewis
It is hard to have patience with people who say, "There is no death" or "Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is, matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
C. S. Lewis
It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.
C. S. Lewis
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
C. S. Lewis
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Oh, all right then- have it your way!'
C. S. Lewis
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
C. S. Lewis, 'The Pilgrim's Regress'
Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. Lewis, A preface to "Paradise Lost"
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
C. S. Lewis
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
C. S. Lewis,
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war...Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest....
C. S. Lewis
People often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
C. S. Lewis
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them - never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C. S. Lewis
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
C. S. Lewis
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. In those, we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
C. S. Lewis
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
C. S. Lewis
No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.
C. S. Lewis
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law that overarches rulers and ruled alike.
C. S. Lewis
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
C.S. Lewis,
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
C.S. Lewis
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.
C. S. Lewis
I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen.
C. S. Lewis
A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered.
C. S. Lewis
A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional... values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.
C. S. Lewis
This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people.
C. S. Lewis
It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.
C. S. Lewis
Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.
C. S. Lewis
Pride is a spiritual Cancer: It eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
C. S. Lewis
When you reach the thing you were desiring, if it doesn't satisfy you, it was not what you were desiring.
C. S. Lewis
You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You do have a body.
C. S. Lewis
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
C. S. Lewis
Nothing is beautiful except the abnormal; and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.
C. S. Lewis
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar Wilde
Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Oscar Wilde
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Oscar Wilde
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Oscar Wilde
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Oscar Wilde
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
Oscar Wilde
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
I can resist anything but temptation.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde
Wisdom comes with winters.
Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.
Oscar Wilde
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde
The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
Oscar Wilde
In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
Beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
Oscar Wilde
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Oscar Wilde
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
Oscar Wilde
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar Wilde
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
Oscar Wilde
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
Oscar Wilde
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar Wilde
Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Oscar Wilde
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Oscar Wilde
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Oscar Wilde
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Oscar Wilde
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
Oscar Wilde
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
I can resist anything but temptation.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde
Wisdom comes with winters.
Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.
Oscar Wilde
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde
The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
Oscar Wilde
In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
Beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
Oscar Wilde
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Oscar Wilde
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
Oscar Wilde
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar Wilde
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
Oscar Wilde
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
Oscar Wilde
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
visitors since July 2007
