Quoetry

"I am striving for the kingdom of heaven, which is within. For me, the only way to find God is to see Him in His creation and be one with it. This can only be done by service of all." Mahatma Gandhi in a 1926 letter reproduced in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 46, page 101.

Robert A Heinlein from Stranger in a Strange Land: "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

This episode of Quoetry explores the connection between Leo Tolstoy’s assertion—“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”—and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem Patience Taught by Nature. The discussion delves into how both writers portray patience as an active force, not mere resignation, but a means of endurance and strength. Tolstoy’s War and Peace provides a historical embodiment o...

Detroit, Michigan links both our quotation and poem today. The quotation is from Henry Ford: "Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right." The poem is by Edgar A Guest, and entitled "Keep Going" it shares sentiment even more than geography with Ford's quotation.

Today's quotation is from James P Carse: "Society is where we prove to parents qua audience that we are not what we thought they thought we were." Today's poem is Charles Lamb's "Parental Recollections".

Today's quotation is from Muriel Rukeyser: "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." Muriel is pictured in the podcast thumbnail with credit to Imogen Cunningham (1945). Today's poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams.

Today's quotation is from Samuel Johnson: "It was the peculiar artifice of Habit not to suffer her power to be felt at first. Those whom she led, she had the address of appearing only to attend, but was continually doubling her chains upon her companions; which were so slender in themselves, and so silently fastened, that while the attention was engaged by other objects, they were not easily perce...

Today's quotation is from former Conservative Prime Minister, John Major: "When the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage." Today's poem is "How the Leaves Came Down" by Susan Coolidge.

Today's quotation is from William Goldman: "Nobody knows anything". Today's poem is "A Drinking Song" by W B Yeats.

Today's quotation is from "Candide" by Voltaire: "We must cultivate our garden." Today's poem is "When Shall I Tread Your Garden Path?" by Dorothy Wordsworth.

Today's quotation is a gem from Amos Tversky: "You waste years by not being able to waste hours." And today's poem has you waste a little longer than usual with me today. It is "Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman.

Today's quotation is taken from Euripides. Today's poem is Thomas Hardy's "The Voice".

Today's quotation is by Edgar Degas: "Painting is easy when you don't know how; very difficult when you do." Frances Harper provides today's poem, "The Artist".

Today quotation is from Mark Twain: "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." Sarah Helen Whitman's "Science" is our featured poem.

Today's quotation is commonly attributed to Lao Tzu but the modernity of theme and language makes me think not. Nevertheless, here it is: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." For our poem we turn to Ernest Downson's "Exchanges". For such a short poem it contains an incredible number of directions of interpretation.

Our quotation today is taken from Nassim Taleb: "[A]void the company of achievers and people in suits who don't read books." Our poem today is "Richard Corey" by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

Our quotation today is by Sir Francis Bacon. Today's poem is "Revenge" by L. E. L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon).

Our quotation today is from Abraham Lincoln: "I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the very end." Today's poem is "Casabianca" by Felicia Hemans. Sadly, it is based on a true story. Hemans provides the following note: 'Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Ni...

Today's quotation is from Golda Meir: "Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard there's nothing you can do." Our poem today is "The Deserter" by John Philpot Curran.

Today's quotation is from Andrew Jackson: "I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me". Today's poem is yet another by Emily Dickinson, "There came a wind like a bugle"

Today's quotation is one from Walt Disney: "Sometimes I think myself a little bee. I go from one area of the studio to another and gather pollen and sort of stimulate everybody." Today's poem is "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" by Isaac Watts.

Our quotation today is from Ken Galbraith, who served FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." Today's poem is one of my own, "On Merit". And while I will allow you to judge whether I merit the two poems I have featured in the podcast thus far, I do h...

At times I am inclined to agree with Alonso de Aragón that "The best counselors are the dead / Optimi consiliari mortui". That is, perhaps, because they are such good listeners. Our poem today is "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare.

Our quotation today is by Wilbur Wright: "After I get hold of a truth I hate to lose it again, and I like to sift all the truth out before I give up on an error." Our poem is by John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn". Keats's penultimate line underscores our combination: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".

Today's quotation is courtesy of J D Rockefeller's business partner, Henry Flagler: "I have always been contented, but I have never been satisfied." Today's poem is another from another Henry - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with "A Psalm of Life".