The Shed - Music and poetry venue in Brawby, Ryedale, North Yorkshire, England.
Poem of the Day - Read a different poem every day, or hear it in Real Audio.
UK Writers Copyright Information Resource - Literary protection and information site aimed at helping unpublished writers understand how to protect their work: links and FAQ.
Bridport Prize - Creative writing competition for poetry and short stories Deadline: June 30, each year.
"When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one." (Helen Rowland) Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
-- Danny Kaye Ambition is not a vice of little people.
-- Michel de Montaigne The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
-- Emerson, Ralph Waldo It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was
someone else.
-- Rogers Poetry Never judge a book by its movie.
-- J. W. Eagan "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all." (Harry S. Truman) Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn
themselves to a life of vinegar.
-- Countess of Blessington Poetry
It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would
have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I
didn' More light!
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dying words "Even death is unreliable. Instead of zero it may be some ghastly hallucination, such as the square root of minus one." (Samuel Beckett) Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.
-- Herbert Westren Turnbull "What is the difference between exploring and being lost?" (Dan Eldon, photojournalist) Poetry The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
-- Gloria Leonard Where there is love there is life.
-- Gandhi A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke
or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.
-- Charles Brower Poetry
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
-- John Stuart Mill In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice
that I am not a Republican.
-- H. L. Mencken A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.
Harry S. Truman Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll Poetry When one find's oneself in a hole of one's own making, it is a good time to examine the quality of
the workmanship.
-- John Renmerde Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and around the hands and feet of the man. I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
-- E. B. White Poetry
I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like
toxic waste.
-- David Bissonette "If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost." (Aristotle) "Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?" (George Bernard Shaw) I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it.
And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.
-- George Bus "I like boring things." (Andy Warhol, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up) Poetry My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
-- Abraham Lincoln "It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question." (Eugene Ionesco) A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
-- Anonymous Poetry
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.
-- Max Frisch The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.
-- Abraham Lincoln I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like
toxic waste.
-- David Bissonette Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't. -- Borge Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them
tender.
-- Mary Buckley Poetry "The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely." (Napoleon Bonaparte) "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all." (Harry S. Truman) Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
-- David Starr Jordan Poetry
I married beneath me. All women do.
-- Lady Nancy Astor, attributed Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987 Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
-- Mark Twain The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their
powers as a State depend.
-- Benjamin Disraeli I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes out well in it.
-- Virginia Woolf Poetry "A girl can wait for the right man to come along, but in the meantime that still doesn't mean she can't have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones." (Cher) Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper "Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Poetry
I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it.
And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.
-- George Bus "If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library." (Frank Zappa) "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." (Plutarch) A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
-- Emiliano Zapata Poetry ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911 Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n roll." (Shigeru Miyamoto, game designer for Nintendo) Poetry
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it.
-- Anonymous If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry. -- Chekhov A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.
-- Moliere I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
-- Douglas Adams Poetry When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is
always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsch Life is like a movie--since there aren't any commercial breaks, you have to get up and go to the
bathroom in the middle of it.
-- Nick Mirov Poetry
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good
reputation.
-- Oscar Wilde I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
- Ian L. Fleming "The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions." (John A. Simone Jr.) I'd marry again if I found a man who had 15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the
marriage and guarantee he'd be dead within a year.
-- Bette Davis Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
- Georg Lichtenberg Poetry Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than
yourself.
-- William Faulkner Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't. -- Borge "I think people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown. But it's ironic....That unknown was once very well known. It's where are souls belong....The only solution is to confront them--co Poetry
"I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is." (Alan Watts) Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art
imitates life.
-- Oscar Wilde We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. -- H.L. Mencken The love we give away is the only love we keep.
-- Elbert Hubbard "I have learned that to be with those I like is enough." (Walt Whitman) Poetry "Every now and then say, 'What the fu(c)k.' 'What the fu(c)k' gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future." (Curtis Armstrong, Risky Business, 1983) All human actions are equivalent... and... all are on principle doomed...
-- Jean-Paul Sartre, "Being and Nothingness" Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the
writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain Poetry
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them
good.
-- H.L. Mencken We can say 'Peace on Earth,' we can sing about it, preach about it or pray about it, but if we have
not internalized the mythology to make it happen inside us, then it will not be.
-- Betty Shabazz "When you resort to attacking the messenger and not the message, you have lost the debate." (Addison Whithecomb) Husband: a man who buys his football tickets four months in advance and waits until December 24 to do his Christmas shopping. "Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown!
Lawrence: We can't all be lion tamers." (Thomas Edward Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) Poetry "Sometimes I think it's another sign of the sad necessity of our crowded, lonely lives, an urgent hopeless reaching out to touch something real, a deep hunger for something authentic when everything s Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
-- Oscar Wilde "I love to doubt as well as know." (Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321) Poetry
