. . . 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...

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,...

"Fate thrives on figures and intricate designs. Its difficulty lies in its complexity. But life is difficult by reason of its...

Quitting school at fifteen, I side-stepped the self-promoting pains of so-called puberty, signing on with the GPO/HPK.* Taught Morse...

slowly even in the vase and long separated from its tree a bud opens in spring Monday, March 24th, 2025

If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either.— Thomas Nagel,  The...

Genghis Khan died on August 25, 1227, mourned (?) by some 600 wives, and at his grave the Mongols immolated thirty maidens. Eight hundred...

“ Pure intelligence is . . . a product of dying . . ..and is therefore in principle madness. ”—Ferenczi Confined to the prison house...

Pandora’s jar is only there to be rejected—

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; —Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene vii   Yeats...

Claude Rowberry, London Blitz—Interior of a Ruined House. Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, UK “Be not deceived: evil communications...

Christ in Limbo by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ca. 1450–1516), Philadelphia Museum of Art Sir, Colonus is an...

For Joel Cutrara The Truth was there already to be true.—Auden, "The History of Truth" (1958?) It came to me just now, dreaming, that...

Freddie Skinner, De Aar (1973) The gods chose the victorious side, Cato the defeated one / Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa ...

The drop may spill; the rest'll trundle on.