Citatepedia^®.com

Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1

To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.I.

Say first, of God above, or man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?

[...] Read more

poem by Alexander Pope
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Essay on Man

The First Epistle

Awake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate(2) free o'er all this scene of Man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot,
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts(3), the giddy heights explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the Manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate(4) the ways of God to Man.
1. Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?

[...] Read more

poem by Alexander Pope
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

III. The Other Half-Rome

Another day that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread,—
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were,—
Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip,—
When a probationary soul that moved

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good - he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad - he and the world is destroyed.

quote by Maimonides
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Good Friday

A recipe for thought:

Take a pair of scales
as large as the boundless human mind,
and into one scale
pour all the goodness in the world that you can see
carefully
and into the other,
all the evil in the world that you can see;
into the first scale now add
all the joy that you have known
(the joy of others you can never measure)
and into the other, all the misery,
(the misery of others you can never measure) :
into the first, add all the laughter you can remember,
and into the second, all the tears;

and now, from the cupboards of your heart,
add what you will
to either scale:

[...] Read more

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Black & White

I am one with the world tonight
I am proud to be this far from you
You say that you have no regrets
But I know that you do
You told me someone stole the eye
I know him too
Ive come to the conclusion - yes, I know
That between black and white, there is no room for two
The scale might be wide, but there's no need to be blind
Cause between black and white, there is no room for two
I leave all of the grey behind
I see clear, I know that Ill find
You claim that you are innocent
But tell me who isnt
You think that youre going to be saved
Theres no such thing as a saint
Ive come to the conclusion - yes, I know
That between black and white, there is no room for two
The scale might be wide, but there is no need to be blind
Cause between black and white, there is no room for two

[...] Read more

song performed by In Flames
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Door Of Humility

ENGLAND
We lead the blind by voice and hand,
And not by light they cannot see;
We are not framed to understand
The How and Why of such as He;

But natured only to rejoice
At every sound or sign of hope,
And, guided by the still small voice,
In patience through the darkness grope;

Until our finer sense expands,
And we exchange for holier sight
The earthly help of voice and hands,
And in His light behold the Light.

I

Let there be Light! The self-same Power
That out of formless dark and void

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Austin
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Canto the Fourth

I.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O’er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

II.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

There is another common misapprehension that the magnitude scale is itself some kind of instrument or apparatus. Visitors will frequently ask to 'see the scale.'

quote by Charles Francis Richter
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!