Poems List

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.

Free advice is worth the price.

Reverence is the highest quality of man's nature; and that individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to form channels for itself where none exists; thus Americans, in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshiping themselves.

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!

The direction of a man's thought is always the decisive factor in his personality. His whole outer life will be determined by the inward inclination of his mind.

You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone.

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.

Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand.

Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH.

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word Love. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.

Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.

The God of the Old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction...

Part of courage is simple consistency.

What happens when the future has come and gone

However many ways there are of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.

Bohemia has no banner. It survives by discretion.

Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.

Ideology is a form of illiteracy. Those addicted to it are unable to understand anything other than what fits their pattern.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.