Nehaveigur

Category: Quotes

  • Never Kissed At All

    Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest, Robin’s lost in play, But the kiss in Colin’s eyes Haunts me night and day. Sara Teasdale: The Look

  • Vengeance and Vindication

    Here’s a good paragraph by Philosopher Bear: People imagine that they want vengeance, when really what they want is vindication. In many cases, I think, the reason victims want a long sentence (when they do want a long sentence- it is a mistake to think they always do) is because…

  • Wild Nights!

    Wild nights – Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury! Futile – the winds – To a Heart in port – Done with the Compass – Done with the Chart! Rowing in Eden – Ah – the Sea! Might I but moor – tonight -…

  • If He Worried He Hid It

    Somebody said that it couldn’t be done But he with a chuckle replied That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried. So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin On his face. If he worried he hid it. He…

  • In Praise of Mystery

    In a few days, the Europa Clipper spacecraft is going to launch towards Jupiter. After a journey of six years, it will arrive at Jupiter’s moon Europa, surveying it for signs of habitability. Europa is one of the few places in the solar system with liquid water and the most…

  • The Malady of the Quotidian

    The time of year has grown indifferent. Mildew of summer and the deepening snow Are both alike in the routine I know. I am too dumbly in my being pent. The wind attendant on the solstices Blows on the shutters of the metropoles, Stirring no poet in his sleep, and…

  • Lose No More Time In Sighing

    Gather ye roses while ye may, Old time is still a-flying; A world where beauty fleets away Is no world for denying. Come lads and lasses, fall to play Lose no more time in sighing The very flowers you pluck to-day To-morrow will be dying; And all the flowers are…

  • Imperially Slim

    Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, “Good-morning,”…

  • I Thank Whatever Gods May Be

    Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond…

  • There Is No Magic Any More

    There is no magic any more, We meet as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea – There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But though the…

  • Love Is Not All

    Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor…

  • A Lucky Guess

    A colleague and I were looking over a graph with same data he had produced. I didn’t understand it, so I asked him about a data point that stuck out. “Why is this one so big?” I asked, hoping that the answer wouldn’t turn out to be too obvious. He…

  • Ninety-Two in the Shade

    This is Thomas McGuane’s most well-known novel and the first I’ve read. It captures 1970s Key West, a place and period that I’ve recently encountered through the documentary All That Is Sacred. The novel isn’t much like anything I’ve read before. It’s off-the-charts playful. Some parts are funny, like this…

  • Oh I Am Sick of Brick and Stone

    A wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels, I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels; I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limit of the land, Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. Oh I’ll be going, leaving the noises…

  • Fog

    The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Carl Sandburg: Fog

  • Content to See, Glad to Remember

    He hears with gladdened heart the thunder Peal, and loves the falling dew; He knows the earth above and under – Sits and is content to view. He sits beside the dying ember, God for hope and man for friend, Content to see, glad to remember, Expectant of the certain…

  • Look, and Despair!

    I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read…

  • The Silent Men Who Do Things

    Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on, Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore, Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon, Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar? Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,…

  • Happiness Only Real When Shared

    Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra Nevada at Donner Pass. One semi-trailer truck follows the next in a near-continuous train, connecting the mighty economy of California with those of the states further East. I was travelling on a different kind of road. The Pacific Crest Trail is a long distance hiking…

  • The Ant God

    Finding I could speak the language of ants, I approached one and inquired, “What is God like? Does he resemble the ant?” He answered, “God! No indeed – we have only a single sting but God, He has two!“ Idries Shah

  • Artist and Work Becoming One

    32 minutes into the documentary All That Is Sacred, Tom McGuane quotes Stéphane Mallarmé: At the point at which an artist dies, whatever his life was, whatever his work was, they become one thing. They can be two things, but when they die, they become one thing. This is a…

  • More Than Music

    Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead. Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have seen your…

  • Nothing Gold Can Stay

    Nature’s first green is gold Her hardest hue to hold Her early leaf’s a flower But only holds an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf So Eden sank to grief So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost

  • The Earth Used to be God’s Body

    One of the scenes in All That is Sacred, a short film about the artists and writers who got their start in 1970s Key West, shows the last words Jim Harrison wrote as he died. I wasn’t able to decipher the poem but found a transcription here. In unease the…

  • Beloved Dust

    And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead, This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than…

  • Rage Against the Dying of the Light

    Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that…

  • Lovely in Her Bones

    I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on…

  • Make Bright the Arrows

    Make bright the arrows Gather the shields: Conquest narrows The peaceful fields. Stock well the quiver With arrows bright: The bowman feared Need never fight. Make bright the arrows, O peaceful and wise! Gather the shields Against surprise. Edna St. Vincent Millay: Make bright the arrows

  • All That Is Sacred

    We go through life with a diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms. F. Scott Fitzgerald This quote must’ve been popular in 1970s Key West. Thomas McGuane uses it in an interview about the period and Jim Harrison discusses it in a movie about fly fishing in the Florida Keys. Circa 1973, Key…

  • One Who Would Resign Gladly His Lot

    Man alive, that mournst thy lot, Desiring what thou hast not got, Money, beauty, love, what not; Deeming it blesseder to be A rotted man, than live to see So rude a sky as covers thee; Deeming thyself of all unblest And wretched souls the wretchedest, Longing to die and…

  • Fire and Ice

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

  • Peace Comes Dropping Slow

    I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows I will have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping…

  • Ten Thousand Years From Now

    Brother, that breathe the August air Ten thousand years from now, And smell – if still your orchards bear Tart apples on the bough – The early windfall under the tree, And see the red fruit shine, I cannot think your thoughts will be Much different from mine. Should at…

  • To See The Land I Love

    Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the night While others take their rest. Bridges of iron lace, A suddenness of trees, A lap of mountain mist All cross my line of sight, Then a bleak wasted place,…

  • The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep

    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’s queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The…

  • There Exists No Loom

    Upon this age, that never speaks its mind, This furtive age, this age endowed with power To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find What swims before his prow, what swirls behind – Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,…

  • Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad

    Why should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly fisher’s wrist Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante once Live to bear children to a dunce; A Helen of social welfare dream Climb on a wagonette to…

  • Pale Blue Dot: A Very Small Stage

    From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived…

  • Pale Blue Dot: A Restless Few

    For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has…

  • They Do Not Sweat or Whine or Weep

    I think I could turn and live with animals,They are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me…

  • Gagarin

    Gagarin says, in ecstasy, he could have gone on forever he floated ate and sang and when he emerged from that one hundred eight minutes off the surface of the earth he was smiling Then he returned to take his place among the rest of us from all that division…

  • Hypocrisy

    Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue François de La Rochefoucauld David Mitchell makes the point that we cannot reasonably expect politicians to have absolute integrity. Very few people reach such a standard, and those that do make poor politicians. To win votes, they sometimes have to say things…

  • A Harder Thing Than Triumph

    Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shame in his own Nor in his neighbors’ eyes; Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn…

  • Our Fathers Also

    Thrones, Powers, Dominions, Peoples, Kings, Are changing ‘neath our hand. Our fathers also see these things But they do not understand. All Profit, all Device, all Truth, Written it was or said By the mighty men of their mighty youth,Which is mighty being dead. Rudyard Kipling: Our Fathers Also

  • Love and Friendship

    Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree – The holly is dark when the rose-briar  blooms But which will bloom most constantly? The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring, Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again And who will call the…

  • A Really Big Lunch

    A collection of Jim Harrison’s food writing. The introduction is by Harrison’s friend, celebrity chef, gifted writer and harasser of women Mario Batali. Some of Harrison’s best insights compare the pleasures of the flesh and of the mind: As a mediocre student I wasn’t in the least interested in critical…

  • Hope and History

    History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. Seamus Heaney: The Cure at Troy

  • Insufficient Information

    Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself. Jack McDevitt: Odyssey

  • All the Magic

    Sandra’s seen a leprechaun, Eddie touched a troll Laurie danced with witches once, Charlie found some goblins’ gold. Donald heard a mermaid sing, Susy spied an elf, But all the magic I have known I’ve had to make myself. Shel Silverstein: Magic

  • The Purpose of Poetry

    Poetry is not conceptual thought … poetry, even if it’s about big issues, is always about a particular case. And so, a poet uses words in such a way that they don’t address primarily your intellect … The purpose of poetry is not to understand it but to experience it.…

  • A Tall Ship

    I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s…

  • Devouring Time

    Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws, And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the…

  • The Thing About an Apple

    Here’s the thing about an apple: it sticks in the throat. It’s a package deal: Lust and understanding. Immortality and death. Sweet pulp with cyanide seeds. It’s a bang on the head that births up whole sciences. A golden delicious discord, the kind of gift chucked into a wedding feast…

  • Not Man the Less, but Nature More

    There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more George Byron

  • We Don’t Know

    Admitting that we do not know, and maintaining perpetually the attitude that we do not know the direction necessarily to go, permit the possibility of alteration, of thinking, of new contributions and new discoveries for the problem of developing a way to do what we want ultimately, even when we…

  • A Microscopic Topic

    I am a paramecium That cannot do a simple sum And it’s a rather well known fact I’m quite unable to subtract If I’d an eye, I’d surely cry About the way I multiply For though I’ve often tried and tried I do it backwards… And divide. Jack Pelutsky: A…

  • Central Limit Theorem

    Plato, despair! We prove by norms How numbers bear Empiric forms, How random wrong Will average right If time be long And error slight; But in our hearts Hyperbole Curves and departs To infinity. Error is boundless. Nor hope nor doubt, Though both be groundless, Will average out. J.V. Cunningham:…

  • Exploration

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

  • Placebo

    No can do. I am doctor not of medicine, but Latinity. I am the future, singular, indicative. The first person. What do you take me for? If is a real condition. If I’m a pill, then you are double blind. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Spoonful of sugar,…

  • Early Bird

    Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird And catch the worm for your breakfast plate. If you’re a bird, be an early early bird – But if you’re a worm, sleep late. Shel Silverstein: Early Bird

  • Process Over Content

    The central fact of our time is the triumph of process over content. Jim Harrison: The Great Leader

  • The Gospel of Nature

    John Burroughs published Time and Change in 1912. Hewas a well known naturalist, corresponding with Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and others. He has been largely forgotten since, even though much his nature writing is still relevant and insightful today. The following is from The Gospel of Nature, a chapter of…

  • Nature’s Infinite Book of Secrecy

    In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read. William Shakespeare

  • The Battle of the Bulge

    To hell with you, ignoble paunch, abhorrent in my sight! I gaze at your rotundity, and savage is my frown. I’ll rub you and I’ll scrub you and I’ll drub you day and night, But by the gods of symmetry I swear I’ll get you down. Your smooth and smug…

  • Builds Character

    If a person who has not had enough exercise attempts to backpack, then he will find the going difficult. He might think, “I sweat, I get out of breath, I’m out of shape.” But he is wrong to think the tribulation is uniquely his. Everyone sweats; everyone pants for breath.…

  • No Man Is An Island

    No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main John Donne

  • No Brief Candle

    I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,…

  • The Line Separating Good and Evil

    The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  • Tracking

    Excerpts from Jim Harrison’s third-person autobiography Tracking, which appeared in his collection The Summer He Didn’t Die. About rivers: The last few days in the north he spent most of the time in the woods after packing was done. The water was warmish in August and he was able to…

  • When One is Most Alive

    There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. Jack London

  • The Stamp of our Parents

    Whose history can ever reveal very much? In my view Americans put too much emphasis on their pasts as a way of defining themselves, which can be death-dealing. I know I’m always heartsick in novels when the novelist makes his clanking, obligatory trip into the Davy Jones locker of the…

  • The Witch

    Toil and grow rich,What’s that but to lieWith a foul witchAnd after, drained dry,To be broughtTo the chamber whereLies one long soughtWith despair?William Butler Yeats: The witch

  • Revenge is Sour

    The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish daydream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates…

  • The Thing With Feathers

    “Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops – at all And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard And sore must be the storm That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm…

  • The First Snowfall

    The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.…

  • Liberalism and Authority

    The liberal attitude does not say you should oppose authority. It says only that you should be free to oppose authority. Bertrand Russell You’re talking about a culture that teaches people how to make moral choices, that teeters very easily into a culture… into a totalitarian, authoritarian culture. But a…

  • The Man in the Arena

    It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and…

  • Three Nights Song

    He waits to happen with the clearreality of what he thinks about-to be a child who wakes beautifully,a man always in the state of wakingto a new room, or at night, wakingto a strange room with snow outside,and the moon beyond glass,in a net of branches,so bright and clear and…

  • Tree House

    A tree house, a free house, A secret you and me house, A high up in the leafy branches Cozy as can be house. A street house, a neat house, Be sure and wipe your feet house Is not my kind of house at all – Let’s go live in…

  • Specialization is for Insects

    A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch…

  • The Alphabet of American Animals

    The armadillo, the armadillo has armor above but not below The bear, the bear has a lot of hair everywhere The coyote, the coyote can never let the chickens be The deer, the deer are always full of fear The eagle, the eagle, to hunt it is illegal The frog,…

  • Acquainted With the Night

    I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain – and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.…

  • Yonder Blue Ridge

    May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the…