SERENDIPITY

Serendipity : the faculty of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

"This page contains some of my favorite poems, quotes, and essays, more will be added as time permits."


The past alone is truly real: the present is but a painful, struggling birth into the immutable being of what is no longer. Only the dead exist fully. The lives of the living are fragmentary, doubtful, and subject to change; but the lives of the dead are complete, free from the sway of Time, the all-but omnipotent lord of the world.

On History   by Betrand Russell The Independent Review July 1904



The glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things,

Death the Leveler  by James Shirley





To whom I owe the leaping delight That quickens my senses in our wakingtime,

A Dedication to my Wife  by T.S. Eliot




Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994.



Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both

The Road Not Taken   by Robert Frost



"Falling in love is the beginning of all wisdom, all sympathy, all compassion, all art, all religion; and in its larger sense is the one thing in life worth doing." [Elbert Hubbard]

True pleasure breathes not city air, Nor in Art's temples dwells,

Pleasure    by Charlotte Brontė




Time goes, you say?--ah no!  Alas, Time stays,--we go!

The Paradox of Time  By Austin Dobson




Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

Self-Dependence   By Matthew Arnold




Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,

Dreamers    By Siegfried Sassoon




When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

When You Are Old    by William Butler Yeats




"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."  ~ Betrand Russell ~



Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear
Each secret fishy hope or fear.

Heaven   By Rupert Brooke




So sweet love seemed that April morn,
When first we kissed beside the thorn,

So Sweet Love Seemed That April Morn   By Robert Bridges




"In a world torn by every kind of fundamentalism --religious, ethnic, nationalist and tribal - we must grant first place to economic fundamentalism, with its religious conviction that the market, left to its own devices, is capable of resolving all our problems. This faith has its own ayatollahs. Its church is neo-liberalism; its creed is profit; its prayers are for monopolies."   ~Carlos Fuentes~




Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:


A Red, Red Rose   By Robert Burns






Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night   By Dylan Thomas






I love breasts, hard
Full breasts, guarded
By a button.


Breasts   By Charles Simic