My thoughts, but not my own

Here I am, an old man
in a dry month.
Being read to
By a boy
waiting for rain

T.S. Elliot

He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
quite through the deeds of men.
He loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony
He hears no music.
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit
that could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease.

Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

I can as easily still the fierce tempests
or stop the rapid thunderbolt, as command the motions
and operations of my own mind

John Adams

Little do [we] perceive what solitude is,
and how far it extendeth, for a crowd
is not company, and faces are but a
gallery of pictures, and talk but a
tinkling cymbal where there is no love.

Sir John Lubback



Invictus (1875)
Out of the night that covers me,
black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the horror of the shade,
and yet the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

God sends meat,
and the devil sends cooks

John Taylor

Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Cast me gently
Into morning,
For the night
Has been unkind.
Take me to a
Place so holy
That I can wash
This from my mind,
The memory of choosing
Not to fight.

Sara Mclachlin



The Demon, in my chamber high,
This morning came to visit me,
And, thinking he would find some fault,
He whispered: I would know of thee.

Charles Baudelaire