Bristol Poetry Can - Enabling and encouraging people to get involved, raising awareness and enjoyment of this art form: news festival, contact details, projects and links.
The Bristol Poetry Slam - Competitive poetry - poets perform their work and the audience decide the winner by their applause. History, slamming in schools and workshops.
"I'm so insane, I voted for Eisenhower."
"Oh yeah, well I'm so insane, I voted for Eisenhower TWICE!"
-- Ken Kesey from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" "Death solves all problems--no man, no problem." (Josef Stalin) As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
-- Oscar Wilde "What is the difference between exploring and being lost?" (Dan Eldon, photojournalist) Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't
take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates...
-- Anonymous Poetry The advice your son rejected is now being given by him to your grandson. Give the people not hell, but hope and courage.
-- John Murray Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children.
-- Miriam Robbins Poetry
"If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair." (Samuel Johnson) Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
-- Josh Billings Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
-- Samuel Johnson It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal Poetry A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.
-- Kin Hubbard Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes
unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." (A. A. Milne) Poetry
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from
both sides.
-- Margaret Thatcher Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their
teachers.
-- Socrates Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
-- T. S. Eliot Guide to understanding a net.addict's day:
Slow day: didn't have much to do, so spent three hours on usenet.
Busy day: managed to work in three hours of usenet.
Bad day: barely squeezed in three ho Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before
marriage, which is never advisable.
-- Oscar Wilde Poetry "The intellect is always fooled by the heart." (François VI Duke (duc) de La Rochefoucauld, 1616-80) Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
-- W. Somerset Maugham The theory used to be you marry an older man because they are more mature. The new theory is that men don't mature. So you might as well marry a younger one. Poetry
Infatuation is when you think that he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger,
as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is
when you r Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...and the only one that can be mass
produced with unskilled labor.
-- Wernher von Braun At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in
every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep
up with software demands "Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." (George Bernard Shaw) Poetry "The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." (William Hazlitt) Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday
afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz "I know that God won't give me more trouble than I can handle ... but sometimes I wish he wouldn't trust me so much." (Mother Teresa) Poetry
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all
over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a
dozen.
-- John Steinbeck If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
-- Calvin Trillin The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." (Edger Allen Poe) Poetry "How is it that we never have time to do a job right, but we always have time to do it over?" (Anonymous) Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for
him.
-- Rich Little The only thing you will ever be able to say in the so-called 'social' sciences is: "some do, some
don't."
-- Ernest Rutherford Poetry
There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing
worth killing for.
-- Tom Robbins Man is the only animal that blushes--or needs to.
-- Mark Twain Live out of your imagination, not your history.
-- Stephen Covey God help the man who won't marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if
he finds her.
-- Benjamin Tillett I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.
-- Jean Cocteau Poetry Despite the high cost of living it remains a popular item.
-- Anonymous 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 "Crime like death is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims." (Charles Dickens, 1812-70, Oliver Twist) Poetry
A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.
-- Marvin Kitman "The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense." (Gilbert Keith Chesterton) May you learn to perform miracles: earn a living and marry off your daughters. The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler "Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible." (Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's Exposures, 1980) Poetry In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
-- Samuel Butler The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself.
-- Woodrow Wilson Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
-- Grover Cleveland Poetry
In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice which is still very much practiced.
-- Helen Rowland It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
-- Mae West Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.
-- Joseph Addison blah "A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself." (James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of The Doors) Learn to laugh at your troubles and you'll never run out of things to laugh at.
-- Lyn Karol Poetry The marriage of Marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of husband and wife depicted
in English common law: Marxism and feminism are one, and that one is Marxism.
-- Heidi Hartmann, The Unha The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
-- John Stuart Mill Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain Poetry
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
-- H. L. Mencken If it weren't for marriage, men would spend their lives thinking they had no faults at all.
-- Anonymous Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
-- Simeon Strunsky Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
-- Steven Wright Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
- Ross MacDonald Poetry If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
-- Tryon Edwards People need loving the most when they deserve it the least.
-- John Harrigan Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is
thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
-- Henry Wadsworth Lo Poetry
You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth
without producing it.
-- George Bernard Shaw Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and
illiterate sport fishermen.
-- P. J. O'Rourke If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
- J. Paul Getty A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.
-- Kin Hubbard Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and
cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
-- Tom Robbins Poetry When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
- Friedrich Nietzsche The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
-- Harper Lee "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what others say you cannot do." (Anonymous) Poetry
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands, but English women only hope to find in their butlers. -- W. Somerset Maugham "If you want to make enemies, try to change something." (Woodrow Wilson, 28th US president, 1856-1924) A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
-- Walter Winchell If men knew all that women think, they'd be twenty times more daring.
-- Alphonse Karr Hey, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!
-- Dr. Strangelove Poetry Live out of your imagination, not your history.
-- Stephen Covey I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.
-- Jules Renard "Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills." (Minna Antrim) Poetry
