Long life!

I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up,
foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust,
I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.

        Ovid, Metamorphoses 

 

 

 

 

 

Stop interrupting

Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.

        Napoleon Bonaparte, The Military Quotation Book

 

 

 

 

Taking our measure

The measure of a country’s greatness
is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.

        Thurgood Marshall, Furman vs. Georgia ruling 1972

 

 

 

 

Determining reality

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

        Ruth Nanda Anshen, Biography of an Idea

 

 

 

 

Rock on

Pop music tells you everything is okay,
while rock music tells you that it’s not okay,
but you can change it.

    Bono, 54th National Prayer Breakfast speech

 

 

 

 

More than the sum of the parts

It is too little to call Man a little world;
except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.
Man consists of more pieces, more parts,
than the world doth, nay, that the world is.

        John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Poet

She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair --
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

         Jane Hirshfield