My Favorite Quotes and Short Poems
I have collected the following quotes and poems over the last 15 to 20 years for no other reason than that I liked them. I have included them because I thought it would be fun to share them. If you have some favorite quotes that you would like to share please feel free to e-mail them to me, and I will include them here.
I searched along the changing edge
Where, sky-pierced now the cloud had broken.
I saw no bird, no blade of wing,
No song was spoken.
I stood, my eyes turned upward still
And drank the air and breathed the light.
Then, like a hawk upon the wind,
I climbed the sky, I made the flight.
Elizabeth J. Buchtenkirk
Sail forth - steer for the deep water only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.
Walt Whitman
"It is not the critic who counts;
nor the man who points out how the strong stumble,
or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,
who strives valiantly,
who errs, and comes up short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
who know neither victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt
To the Future;
Hail and farewell fellow Travelers and Seekers.
The great dark is too great and the night too deep,
we will never fully know each other no matter how hard we might try.
But whatever you are and whatever you become,
I hope you become more than my wildest imagination
and know nothing of my darkest visions and fears.
But know matter what you are or have become
I hope you will always strive with both humility and grace,
to become more than what you are.
To that I toast you.
My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.
Keep your feet from their path;
for their feet run to evil,
and they hasten to thieve and shed blood.
Yet for all their cunning and self-deluded wisdom
born of anger, hate, and unforgiven pain,
they lie in wait only for their own blood;
they ambush only themselves.
Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain;
it takes away the life of those who get it.
The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 1, versus 10-19
We are not here merely to make a living,
but to enrich the world with a finer spirit of hope and achievement,
and we improverish ourselves if we forget the errand.
Woodrow Wilson
That inverted bowl they call the sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
To reach beyond the niche into which we were born,
creating new niches for human life.
We have taken to the Moon the wealth of this nation,
the vision of its political leaders,
the intelligence of its scientists,
the dedication of its engineers,
the careful craftsmanship of its workers,
and the enthusiastic support of its people.
We have brought back rocks, and I think it is a fair trade . . .
Man has always gone where he has been able to go. It's that simple.
He will continue pushing back his frontier,
no matter how far it may carry him from his homeland.
Michael Collins
Astronaut, Apollo 11
It might be helpful to realize, that very probably the parents of the first mative born Martians are alive today.
Harrison "Jack" Schmitt
. . . . and a place in our minds to build castles in the sky.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune
Without the words,
And never stops at all.
Emily Dickinson
There are celestial sights more dazzling,
spectacles that inspire more awe,
but to the thoughtful observer who is privileged to see them well,
there is nothing in the sky so profoundly impressive
as these canals of Mars.
Fine lines and little gossamer filaments only,
cobwebbing the face of the Martian disk,
but threads to draw one's mind after them
across the millions of miles of intervening void.
Percival Lowell, 1908
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I have climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
. . . As you are anxious to know what one looks for in that land,
or why one goes there at such peril,
it is that one is moved to do so by the character of human nature,
. . . the thirst for knowledge: for in man's nature lies that
inclination to explore and see things of which he has been told,
in order to know whether it is as he has been told or not.
"The King's Mirror", anonymous 13th century Norwegian Viking document,
describing the voyages to Greenland and Vinland.
Ten thousand times a hundred thousand
dusty years ago,
Where now extends the Plain of Gold,
Did once my river flow;
It stroked the stones and spoke in tongues
and splashed against my face,
Till ages rolled,
and the Sun shone cold,
On this unholy place.
Jonathan Eberhart,
Lament for the Red Planet
From the Earth to the Moon
and nothing but sky in between
God's favorite creation must be sky
Why else would there be so much.
It is difficult to say what is impossible.
The dream of yesterday is the hope of today,
and the reality of tomorrow.
Robert H. Goddard, 1901
Ah, who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who justify these restless explorations?
.
.
.
Are the wings plumed for such far flights?
Walt Whitman
We are all . . . children of this universe. Not just Earth, or Mars, or this system, but the whole grand fireworks. And if we are interested in Mars at all, it is only because we wonder over our past and worry terribly about our possible future.
Ray Bradbury, 1973
Mars and the Mind of Man
Of all investments into the future,
the conquest of space demands the greatest efforts
and the longest-term commitment . . .
but it also offers the greatest reward:
none less than a universe.
Daniel Christlein
"Here it is
The ragged coast - the coast that no one knows.
How far the lands march inland?
No one knows.
Is there a Northwest Passage to the East?
Is there Cathy beyond? Can Englishmen
Live there and plant there and breed there?
No one knows.
And yet, I know this much. It must be tried.
My one man's life hath seen this England grow
Into a giant from a stripling boy
Who fenced about him with a wooden sword
And prattled of his grandsires's wars . . .
- The long, the ruinous wars that sucked us dry,
. . . nightmare, endless wars,
. . . Then we turned seaward. Then the trumpets blew.
And, suddenly, after the bloodshot night
. . . and the gropings in the dark,
There were new men, new ships and a new world.
And yet, how did we dare, how did we dare!
How did we dare to send our sailors out
Beyond all Maps?
Stephen Vincent Benet, Western Star (1943)
Imagining the tale of Thomas Smyth, an
Elizabethan merchant/explorer
Press On
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education alone will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
"They had a hunger to explore the Universe
and discover its truths . . .
They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
. . . The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted.
It belongs to the brave.
The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future,
and we will continue to follow them."
Ronald Reagan
Face things as they are.
Do not make excuses, whether
it be for fun or in pain.
A person can live with failure but
not with the excuses that take away
the right to fail.
"The great enemy of truth is often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest --
but the myth -- persistant, persuasive and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy
"To be completely safe you must sit on the fence and watch the birds."
Orville Wright
Opinion is the main thing which does good or harm in the world.
It is our false opinions of things which ruin us.
"I cannot comprehend how any man can want anything but the truth."
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science.
He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement,
is as good as dead.
Albert Einstein
I died as mineral and became a plant.
I died as plant and rose to animal.
I died as animal and I was human.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
to soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
Rumi Jalaluddin
He who has imagination without learning,
is like a bird who has wings but no feet.
He who has learning without imagination is a dead duck.
The measure of health is flexibility,
the freedom to learn from experience . . .
to be influenced by reasonable arguments . . .
and the appeal to the emotions . . .
and especially the freedom to cease when sated.
The essence of illness is the freezing of
behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.
Lawrence Kubie
The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge
is to effect change from within to develop a good heart.
Dalai Lama, 'The Art of Happiness'
"The thrill is not just in winning,
but in the courage to join the race."
Janet Guthrie
Criticism is something you can avoid
by saying nothing,
doing nothing,
and being nothing.
Small minds talk about each other,
mediocre minds talk about events, and
superior minds talk about ideas.
Genius recognizes gensis,
Talent recognizes talent,
But mediocrity knows nothing
higher than itself.
David Chasman
Politics is the art of the possible - which is why so many
second-rate minds go into it.
Genius likes to challenge the impossible.
History has shown that progress comes from differentiation,
not uniformity.
To press beyond existing limits takes imagination, education,
experience, persistence, patience, teamwork, a willingness to learn,
and a deep seated commitment on the part of everyone involved to
press the envelope.
Elegance is simplification. As engineering designs evolve,
they gain false sophistication - empty but seductive ingenuities.
Ruthlessly, agonizingly, these must be stripped away.
We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC
What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven?
If your heart is closed, then you will find behind that door nothing to light your way.
But if your heart is open, you will find behind that door people, who like you, are searching, and you will find the right door together with them.
None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.
Dean Koontz