Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me.
And how am I to face the odds Of man’s bedevilment and God’s? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.
The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude...
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
Stone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder; So leave alone the grass That I am under.
Tomorrow, more’s the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.