Nice Thoughts

All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price. - Juvenal

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. - Theodore Roosevelt

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it. - Lucy Larcom

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.- Edgar Allan Poe

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion. - Nadia Boulanger

Nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong. - Barbara Streisand

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. - Christopher Morley

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it. - John Irving

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. - Samuel Butler

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. - Vernon Howard

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be. - Daniel J. Boorstin

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. - Simone Weil

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven. -  J. B. Priestley

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. - Marcus Aurelius

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. - Jean Paul

I have no methods; all I do is accept people as they are. - Joan Rivers

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. - James A. Baldwin

We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory. - Bernard Williams

Patience is the companion of wisdom. - Saint Augustine

The long sleep of death closes our scars, and the short sleep of life our wounds. - Jean Paul

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. - Winston Churchill

It Seems

It seems
You didn't
Like the way
He read the
News for us

That's why
You took him
Away from us

(addressed to God, this poem is dedicated to all the news bulletins given to us by George Alagiah who's now battling Bowel Cancer. He's one of my favourite news readers on BBC. My best wishes are always with him for a full and speedy recovery.)





Seeing

Seeing
The
Bleak
Ending
That
Life has
Who
Would
Want to
Make
Every day
A new
Beginning?

(my thoughts on seeing Shashi Kapoor's wheelchair photo at age 76)

The above poems © Aparna Chatterjee 2014