. . . he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly...

Enormity’s its own reward; it Pays a parting price.

Who knows or understands the body’s complex rage?

Who would have thought it would be so simple?

An unkindness of ravens trumps a parliament of owls.

A page from the manuscript of Alfred Nobel's play Nemesis Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called...

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."—Oscar Wilde, The Importance of...

No one ever listens when the future speaks.

I realize we may serve a purpose after all:

We're still the fastest gun in any zoo!

I’ve always been a fool, so let me be one now.

Unfairness, you see, scarcely ever fails.

What purpose does that realize?

As they say in real estate: Leave last? Turn out the lights!

An icon of Saint Spyridon ( center, front, identifiable by his shepherd’s hat ) silencing Arius ( right, with hands over his mouth ) at...

Entanglement remains a mystery.

That's how you meet the Happy Few.

A father's nothing like a phone.

Ignorance rules, okay?

Make the most of what’s allowed.

A path is made by walking on it. —Zhuang Zhou 7 Merely is its Chinese name.* Master Zhuang Zhou made it a metaphor for his philosophy....

The cat knows well whose beard he licks.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . .

Photo: Diana Athill with Waguih Ghali Comments by Peter Dreyer on Vivian Gornick’s review (“In Lieu of Love,” New York Review of Books,...

The answer I would give is, No—I love them more.

What has Undoing in store for you and me?

Your quiver’s empty—but that bow is cute!

Nobodaddy wins predict these lines!

Sufficient unto the day is the virtue thereof.

These ills ought you have expected? Yes—or fled quickly to the skies. [Te faudra-il ces maulx attendre ? Ouy, ou tout vif aller ès...

Confused by too much reality, la réalité des faits —facts' factuality—the situation? The Doomsday Clock's hands stand at 89 seconds to...

Max Ernst, "They have slept in the forest too long"

Plunged on our own into a time When digital culture plies its racket, No point in supererogatory rhyme: Doktorvater is Pyewacket.

In the far future, with our dug-up bones, Archaeologists will unearth our phones . . .

We'll bring the dodo back, too, one day.

A promisory outcome is wanted by the banks.

Oh, God, make small The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.—T. E. Hulme I thought—that’s...

“Forget grammar and think about potatoes.”—Gertrude Stein   “History is the pack of lies agreed upon,” Napoleon said—or was it old...

Its formula escapes you; it has lost The certainty that constitutes a thing. —W. H. Auden, “Brussels in Winter” Born into the British...

Chaïm Soutine, The Table (ca. 1923), oil on canvas. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris Every angel is terrible. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino...

If all the good people were clever,     And all clever people were good, The world would be nicer than ever    We thought that it...

The glacier knocks in the cupboard, / The desert sighs in the bed, / And the crack in the tea-cup opens / A lane to the land of the...

Wide to destruction the freeway flows

Forgotten words hide but for a moment

Lines riffing on "Denk nicht zuviel von dem was keiner weiss!" by Stefan George, in Der Stern des Bundes ("The Star of the Covenant")...

“It’s certainty that makes one mad, not doubt.”―Nietzsche, Ecce Homo A hae ma doots! * And well I might —necessity has doubt in sight;...

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia , engraving, 1514 Disoriented, brain-fogged, down at the mouth, I consulted Dr. Despair, my longtime quack,...

They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom’s cause. It...

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’t is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn....

Zeal, Spirit, Hope, and Confidence Are said to constitute “morale,” But I, though pleading self-defense, Find hard to see how, if so,...