Mark Seghers > Mark's Quotes

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“You owe it to all of us to get on with what you're good at.”
― W.H. Auden

“Song of Myself
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
― Walt Whitman

“...Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet. ...”
― W.H. Auden

“Our hunting fathers told the story
Of the sadness of the creatures,
Pitied the limits and the lack
Set in their finished features;
Saw in the lion's intolerant look,
Behind the quarry's dying glare,
Love raging for, the personal glory
That reason's gift would add,
The liberal appetite and power,
The rightness of a god. ...”
― W.H. Auden

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems

“I am a part of all that I have met.”
― Alfred Tennyson, The Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson

“I will drink life to the lees.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
― Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be”
― George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
of human cities torture.”
― George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at three parties each day, most memorably a lavish morning dance hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline, though married to a politically powerful aristocrat who was later prime minister, fell madly in love with Byron. He thought she was “too thin,” yet she had an unconventional sexual ambiguity (she liked to dress as a page boy) that he found enticing. They had a turbulent affair, and after it ended she stalked him obsessively. She famously declared him to be “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” which he was. So was she.”
― Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

“(Childe Harold, Canto iii. Stanzas 113, 114.)

I HAVE not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flatter’d its rank breath, nor bow’d
To its idolatries a patient knee,—
Nor coin’d my cheek to smiles,—nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd 5
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me,— 10
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,—hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing: I would also deem 15
O’er others’ griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,—
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.”
― Lord Bryon

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
― W.H. Auden, Another Time