Lore

Books

Non-Fiction

  1. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
  2. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
  3. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
  4. Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths by Bruce Feiler
  5. The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder by Peter Zeihan
  6. The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine by Charles Petzold
  7. As A Man Thinketh by James Allen
  8. The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
  9. At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future by Edward Dutton & Michael A. Woodley of Menie
  10. Atlas From the Streets to the Ring: A Son's Struggle to Become a Man by Teddy Atlas & Peter Alson
  11. Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan
  12. Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Bradley Hope & Tom Wright
  13. The Book of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto by Phil Champagne
  14. The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free by Rich Lowry
  15. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio Garcia Martinez
  16. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
  17. The Collected Complete Works of Thomas Carlyle by Thomas Carlyle
  18. The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius (translated by H. R. James)
  19. Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald
  20. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday
  21. The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
  22. Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda
  23. Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World by Joseph Menn
  24. The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
  25. Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed.). by Everett M. Rogers
  26. The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus by David O. Sacks & Peter Thiel
  27. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark S. Smith
  28. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future by Ashlee Vance
  29. The End of Big: How the Digital Revolution Makes David the New Goliath by Nicco Mele
  30. Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester
  31. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy by William Strauss & Neil Howe
  32. Gaming the Iron Curtain by Jaroslav Švelch
  33. Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier by Mark Kram
  34. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century by Howard Bloom
  35. God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark
  36. The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer
  37. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  38. The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan
  39. Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton
  40. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
  41. How Diplomats Make War by Francis Neilson
  42. Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell
  43. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by René Girard (translated by James G. Williams)
  44. The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
  45. Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People by Stephen Wolfram
  46. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
  47. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen
  48. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor
  49. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
  50. The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator by Randall Stross
  51. Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World by Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, & Ali Wyne
  52. Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder
  53. Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish & Sean Silcoff
  54. The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History by Howard Bloom
  55. The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom by James Burnham
  56. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
  57. Maps of Meaning by Jordan B. Peterson
  58. Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! by Nicholas Carlson
  59. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
  60. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny
  61. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man by Marshall McLuhan
  62. Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy by Alex Moazed & Nicholas L. Johnson
  63. The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Brought You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram by Howard Bloom
  64. The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks
  65. National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy by Roger Eatwell & Matthew Goodwin
  66. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis
  67. Next: The Future Just Happened by Michael Lewis
  68. The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman
  69. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 11 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning
  70. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  71. Orthodoxy by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
  72. The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen
  73. Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
  74. Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work For You by Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, & Sangeet Paul Choudary
  75. Popular Government: Four Essays by Henry Sumner Maine
  76. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt & David Thomas
  77. René Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture) by Wolfgang Palaver
  78. Resurrection from the Underground Feodor Dostoevsky by René Girard (translated by James G. Williams)
  79. Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West by R. R. Reno
  80. The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by Tim Judah
  81. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
  82. Skin In The Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  83. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean & Peter Elkind
  84. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
  85. The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson & Lord William Rees-Mogg
  86. The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat by Eric Haseltine
  87. Strictures Upon The Declaration Of The Congress At Philadelphia by Thomas Hutchinson
  88. Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham
  89. Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir by Don Eyles
  90. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
  91. Systemantics: The Systems Bible by John Gall
  92. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
  93. That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph
  94. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by René Girard (translated by Stephen Bann & Michael Metteer)
  95. Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie
  96. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
  97. Timeless Earth by Peter Kolosimo (translated by Paul Stevenson)
  98. Underground by Suelette Dreyfus & Julian Assange
  99. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
  100. The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony
  101. Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier
  102. Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
  103. WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly
  104. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
  105. Zero to One by Blake Masters & Peter Thiel

Fiction

  1. Blasphemy by Douglas Preston ★★★★
  2. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy ★★★★
  3. The Catcher in the Rye by Jerome D. Salinger ★★★★
  4. The Code Hunters: A Nicholas Foxe Adventure by Jackson Coppley ★★★★★
  5. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (translated by Robin Buss) ★★★★★
  6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translated by Michael Katz) ★★★★★
  7. Delta-V by Daniel Suarez ★★★★★
  8. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick ★★★★
  9. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand ★★★★★
  10. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski ★★★★
  11. Lord of the Flies by William Golding ★★★★
  12. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translated by Michael Katz) ★★★★
  13. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck ★★★★
  14. The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq (translated by Richard Howard) ★★★★★
  15. Outlaws of the Marsh (Water Margin) by Shi Nai'an & Luo Guanzhong (translated by Sidney Shapiro) ★★★★★
  16. Sanction Book I by Roman McClay ★★★★
  17. Sanction Book II by Roman McClay ★★★★
  18. The Secret of Fatima by Peter J. Tanous ★★★★
  19. Shike Book One: Time of the Dragons by Robert Shea ★★★★★
  20. Shike Book Two: Last of the Zinja by Robert Shea ★★★★★
  21. The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (translated by Stuart C. Hood) ★★★★
  22. Three Kingdoms (4-Volumes) by Luo Guanzhong (translated by Moss Roberts) ★★★★★

I suggest eliding the footnotes that form the outer story of Johnny Truant's commentary about Zampanò's account of the Navidson Record.

Isaac Asimov

  1. I, Robot
  2. The Caves of Steel
  3. Naked Sun
  4. Mirror Image (short story)
  5. The Robots of Dawn
  6. Robots and Empire
  7. Foundation
  8. Foundation and Empire
  9. Second Foundation
  10. Foundation's Edge
  11. Foundation and Earth
  12. Prelude to Foundation
  13. Forward the Foundation

As found in Robot Visions—the collection of short stories and essays.

n.b. The above thirteen Isaac Asimov stories are one coherent series considered best read in the listed order; the following, however, are standalone stories that can be read in any order.

Quotes

Crème de la Crème

"Learning the language isn't just about learning the syntax to write your ifs and fors---it's about learning a way of thinking."

"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." —Leonard H. Courtney

"Sort yourself out. Marshal your arguments. Put yourself in order, so when someone pushes you farther than you should go, you can say no." —Jordan B. Peterson

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." —Friedrich Nietzsche

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." —G. K. Chesterton

"The things that we love tell us what we are." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"Tell me what you read, I will tell you who you are!" —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do." —Carl Jung

"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." —G. K. Chesterton

"It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." —Maimonides

"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean." —G. K. Chesterton

"If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"No one gets away with anything—ever—so take responsibility for your own life." —Jordan B. Peterson

"Discipline equals freedom." —Jocko Willink

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish." —G. K. Chesterton

"This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities." —G. K. Chesterton

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." —G. K. Chesterton

"It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobservable for the nonexistent." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." —G. K. Chesterton

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort. If you look for comfort, you will never find truth." —Payam Golshiri

"Facts have to matter more than feelings." —Edward Snowden

"You must handicap one to make two equal."

"By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"People have different capacities. If they are free, they will not be equal. If they are equal, they will not be free." —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering." —Friedrich Nietzsche

"Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years." —Japanese proverb

"No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means." —Maimonides

"The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." —Rumi

"You don’t want to win an argument—you just want to win." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"You've got to be prepared to lose to win."

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right." —Henry Ford

"The best way to predict your future is to create it." —Abraham Lincoln

"Power is always a product of technology and technology is the business of power." —George Friedman

"Money won’t solve all your problems but it will solve all your money problems." —James Altucher

"Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts." —Winston Churchill

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision." —Maimonides

"The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing." —Isaac Asimov

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." —Confucius

"Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do." —Bruce Lee

"The more you know, the less you use." —Jean Jacques Machado

"There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works." —Alan Perlis

Fortis Fortūna adiuvat
"Fortune favours the brave." —Pliny the Elder

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch

"Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend." —Albert Camus

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." —Aristotle

"Him that I love, I wish to be free—even from me." —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"We often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it." —Jean de La Fontaine

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." —Theodore Roosevelt

Fides et Religio

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." —G. K. Chesterton

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." —G. K. Chesterton

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." —G. K. Chesterton

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." —G. K. Chesterton

"There is no bigot like the atheist." —G. K. Chesterton

"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." —G. K. Chesterton

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." —G. K. Chesterton

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." —G. K. Chesterton

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." —G. K. Chesterton

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." —G. K. Chesterton

"We cannot raise the question: How can there be evil if God exists? without raising the second: How can there be good if He exists not?" —Boethius

"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do." — St. Thomas Aquinas

"This our European structure, built upon the noble foundations of classical antiquity, was formed through, exists by, is consonant to, and will stand only in the mold of, the Catholic Church. Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith." —Hilaire Belloc

"For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice." —St. Thomas Aquinas

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. —King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account. —King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 3:15)

"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Modus Vivendi

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." —G. K. Chesterton

"Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back." —G. K. Chesterton

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." —G. K. Chesterton

"None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia... have any power except over the people who choose to use them." —G. K. Chesterton

"The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings." —G. K. Chesterton

"This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities." —G. K. Chesterton

"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws." —G. K. Chesterton

"A system that takes the pursuit of self-interest and profit as its guiding light does not necessarily satisfy the yearning in the human soul for belief and some higher meaning beyond materialism." —Joseph Stanislaw & Daniel Yergin

"As in the late Roman period, declining official authority, declining personal morality, and increasing public bureaucracy are observed in synchrony. This is not in any way a coincidence. The combination is an infallible symptom of the great terminal disease of the polity—leftism. Leftism is cancer." —Curtis Yarvin

"Socialism isn't a great idea gone wrong—it's an evil philosophy in action." —Ben Shapiro

"In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago. Computers have no effect on productivity because people learn to complicate and repeat tasks that have been made easier." —Matt Ridley (The Red Queen)

"Excessive criticism of others—the ideology of Critical Theory—is borne from the dearth of self-criticism."

"No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life." —Jordan B. Peterson

"A conservative is someone who helps disguise the true nature of a democratic state. The conservative is ineffective by definition, because his goal is to make democracy work properly. The fact that it does not work properly, has never worked properly, and will never work properly, sails straight over his head. He therefore labors cheerfully as a tool for his enemies." —Curtis Yarvin

"Discipline equals freedom." —Jocko Willink

"You can't have a value structure without a hierarchy. They're the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another." —Jordan B. Peterson

"We are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes, that is, bureaucrats, bankers, Davos-attending members of the I.A.N.D (International Association of Name Droppers), and academics with too much power and no real downside and/or accountability. They game the system while citizens pay the price." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing." —St. Thomas Aquinas

Imponderabilia

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it." —Michel de Montaigne

"The more you know, the less you use." —Jean Jacques Machado

"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean." —G. K. Chesterton

"It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything." —G. K. Chesterton

"Love without sacrifice is like theft." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Things always become obvious after the fact." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Wind extinguishes a candle, but energizes a fire." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"A taste of freedom can make you unemployable." —Naval Ravikant

"Marriage teeters on the line between a co-operative venture and a form of mutual exploitation." —Matt Ridley (The Red Queen)

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering." —Friedrich Nietzsche

My dad once said, "Never trust a man who starts a sentence with, 'My dad once said...'" —Father

"People have different capacities. If they are free, they will not be equal. If they are equal, they will not be free." —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" —Isaac Asimov

"We often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it." —Jean de La Fontaine

"We are the progeny of allegory."

"Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana."

"Haste makes waste, and waste makes want, and want makes strife between the goodman and his wife." —John Ray

"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool." —Brigham Young

"Equality kills potentiality."

"Diversity isn't without diversity of thought."

"Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say."

"People always demand experts, though sometimes they are fortunate enough to find a beginner." —Zampanò

"I thought Twitter was driving us apart, but I’m slowly starting to think half of you always hated the other half but never knew it until Twitter." —Michael Arrington

"What but his actions and abilities defines a man?"

"People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. —Isaac Asimov

"It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." —Maimonides

"The best way to predict your future is to create it." —Abraham Lincoln

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right." —Henry Ford

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves." —Ludwig Wittgenstein

"By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"How do you have a just society when genetics is unjust?" —James Watson

War and Peace

Si vis pacem, para bellum
"If you want peace, prepare for war."

Fortis Fortūna adiuvat
"Fortune favours the brave." —Pliny the Elder

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." —G. K. Chesterton

"War is not ‘the best way of settling differences;’ it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you." —G. K. Chesterton

"Anger is rightly robbed of a weapon, not given one." —Publilius Syrus

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak." —Sun Tzu

"There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting." —G. K. Chesterton

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." —Friedrich Nietzsche

"A bad peace is worse than war." —Tacitus

"Religion isn’t the cause of wars, it’s the excuse." —Jasper Fforde

A Spartan mother, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him, saying,
"Either this or upon this." —Plutarch
ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς

Spartan King Leonidas, in response to King Xerxes of Persia demanding the Greeks surrender their weapons, shouted,
"Come and get them!"
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

"I came, I saw, I conquered." —Julius Caesar
VENI ⋅ VIDI ⋅ VICI

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." —Plato

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." —Leonard H. Courtney

In Vino Veritas

"Offense is taken—not given."

"Don't lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell." Jordan B. Peterson

"The things that we love tell us what we are." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." —G. K. Chesterton

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." —G. K. Chesterton

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish." —G. K. Chesterton

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." —G. K. Chesterton

"We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera." —G. K. Chesterton

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." —G. K. Chesterton

"Tell me what you read, I will tell you who you are!" —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Money won’t solve all your problems but it will solve all your money problems." —James Altucher

"Facts have to matter more than feelings." —Edward Snowden

"You must handicap one to make two equal."

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." —Yogi Berra

"When mathematical propositions refer to reality they are not certain; when they are certain, they do not refer to reality." —Albert Einstein

"Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer." —Daphne Kaplan

"What you can imagine depends on what you know." —Daniel C. Dennett

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." —Mark Twain

"He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know." —Lao-tzu

"A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition." —James Allen

"As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking." —James Allen

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." —Isaac Asimov

"Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do." —John Carmack

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision." —Maimonides

"No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means." —Maimonides

"You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes." —Maimonides

"Power is always a product of technology and technology is the business of power." —George Friedman

"A closed mouth don't get fed." —Jay-Z

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." —Friedrich Nietzsche

"Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge." —Carl Jung

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch

"Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong." —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Academy

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." —Richard Feynman

"I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is." —G. K. Chesterton

"If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence." —G. K. Chesterton

"Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." —Jacob Bronowski

"It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobservable for the nonexistent." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"To be a philosopher is to know by reasoning, and reasoning only, what others can only learn from their mistakes." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The questions are the answers." —John Brockman

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." —Henry Ford

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." —G. K. Chesterton

"A genius is someone who takes a complex thing and makes it look simple. An academic does the opposite." —Robert Fanney

"Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe." —Ursula K. Le Guin

"It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated." —Hilaire Belloc

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." —Friedrich Nietzsche

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." —Aristotle

Sapienza

"He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears." —Michel de Montaigne

"Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out." —G. K. Chesterton

"If you are judged by evolutionary pressures, you are subjected to different dynamics than if you are judged by your peers." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"You don’t want to win an argument—you just want to win." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage." —Napoleon Hill

"The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Much of what other people know isn’t worth knowing." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." —William James

"Whatever is received is received according to the nature of the recipient." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"Offense is taken—not given."

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." —Rumi

"You’d be surprised how easy it is to take a wrong turn no matter how short the journey" —Richard Wersher Sr

"A day of doing the right thing is more powerful than a year of doing the wrong." —Dr Phil

"Did I slip up? Fuck yeah I did! Did I give up? Fuck no." —John Joseph McGowan

"For those who have subdued and conquered the mind, it is the best of friends. But for those who fail to do so, the mind remains the greatest of enemies." —Bhagavad Gita, Chapter Six, Lord Krishna to Arjuna (6.05-06)

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort. If you look for comfort, you will never find truth." —Payam Golshiri

"Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time." —Linus Torvalds

"There are two ways to be fooled: one is to believe what isn’t true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true." —Søren Kierkegaard

"Your diet isn't simply what you eat... It's everything you consume with your eyes, ears and mouth." —Zuby

"A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake." —Confucius

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." —Kurt Vonnegut

"Judgment can do without knowledge but not knowledge without judgment." —Michel de Montaigne

"You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone." —Marcus Aurelius

"Process outweighs product." —Cora Minehart

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." —Confucius

"Ask counsel of him who rules himself well." —Leonardo Da Vinci

"I almost feel like human beings are engineered through evolution, we've sort of been designed through natural selection to learn how to survie difficult things, and when the difficult things don't exist we make things that aren't difficult, difficult." —Joe Rogan

"Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power." ―James Allen

"The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state... Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are." —James Allen

"A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts." —James Allen

"And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning. —Isaac Asimov

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. —Isaac Asimov

"The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing." —Isaac Asimov

"We must all either wear out or rust out, everyone of us. My choice is to wear out." —Theodore Roosevelt

"Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years." —Japanese proverb

"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste." —Henry Ford

"Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do." —Bruce Lee

"In the night there is counsel; sleep on it." —Charles P. Stone

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Virtus

"Him that I love, I wish to be free—even from me." —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." —Friedrich Nietzsche

"Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"You've got to be prepared to lose to win."

"Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts." —Winston Churchill

"Sort yourself out. Marshal your arguments. Put yourself in order, so when someone pushes you farther than you should go, you can say no." —Jordan B. Peterson

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." —Theodore Roosevelt

"The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it’s conformity." —John Perry Barlow

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear." —Mark Twain

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die." —G. K. Chesterton

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become." —Carl Jung

"You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do." —Carl Jung

"One's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune." —Boethius

"Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man." —Joseph Addison

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears." —Marcus Aurelius

"Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend." —Albert Camus

"Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will." —St. Thomas Aquinas

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what’s right." —Isaac Asimov

"You must deffend people you disagree with, it is how you find out what your principles really are." —Penn Jillette

"Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer— and meanwhile common life is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another." —Hilaire Belloc

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods"
—Thomas Babington Macaulay

Bits

"Java is the most distressing thing to happen to computing since MS-DOS." —Alan Kay

"There’s no objective and open evidence that OOP is better than plain procedural programming." —Ilya Suzdalnitski

"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California." —Edsger W. Dijkstra

"Object oriented programs are offered as alternatives to correct ones." —Edsger W. Dijkstra

"Sometimes, the elegant implementation is just a function. Not a method. Not a class. Not a framework. Just a function." —John Carmack

"Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming." —Brian Kernighan

"The computing scientist’s main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making." —Edsger W. Dijkstra

"Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity." —David Gelernter

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." —Edsger W. Dijkstra

"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code." —Ken Thompson

"Deleted code is debugged code." —Jeff Sickel

"The multiplication force of technology on cognitive differences is massive." —Jordan B. Peterson

"I find that I don’t understand things unless I try to program them." —Donald E. Knuth

"Our laptops are basically just web browsers." —Curtis Yarvin

"The hardware really wants to run fast and you only need to avoid getting in the way." —Luke Gorrie

"The problem with object-oriented languages is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle." —Joe Armstrong

"When I was 30, 35 years old, I knew, in a deep sense, every line of code I ever wrote. I’d write a program during the day, and at night I’d sit there and walk through it line by line and find bugs. I’d go back the next day and, sure enough, it would be wrong." —Ken Thompson

"UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things." —Doug Gwyn

"There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works." —Alan Perlis

"A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God." —Alan Perlis

"It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one." —Alan Perlis

"The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements." —Brian W. Kernighan

"A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant." —Alan Perlis

"Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?" —Alan Perlis

"When we write programs that "learn", it turns out that we do and they don't." —Alan Perlis

"Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers—not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity." —Alan Perlis

"You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program." —Alan Perlis

"I'd rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game." —John Carmack

"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." —C.A.R. Hoare

"Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul." —John Carmack

"Learning the language isn't just about learning the syntax to write your ifs and fors---it's about learning a way of thinking."

Poems

Book of Verses

Invictus

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

Rewards and Fairies

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

Lays of Ancient Rome

Horatius

XXVII
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods."

XXVIII
"And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?"

XXIX
"Haul down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?"

XXX
Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
A Ramnian proud was he:
"Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee."
And out spake strong Herminius;
Of Titian blood was he:
"I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee."

XXXI
"Horatius," quoth the Consul,
"As thou sayest, so let it be."
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.

XXXII
Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.

XXXIII
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.

—Thomas Babington Macaulay

The Second Jungle Book

The Law of the Jungle

NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Wash daily from nose tip to tail tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting and forget not the day is for sleep.

The jackal may follow the tiger, but, cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the wolf is a hunter—go forth and get food of thy own.

Keep peace with the lords of the jungle, the tiger, the panther, the bear;
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the boar in his lair.

When pack meets with pack in the jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken; it may be fair words shall prevail.

When ye fight with a wolf of the pack ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel and the pack is diminished by war.

The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come.

The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again.

If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crops, and the brothers go empty away.

Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man.

If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide.

The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.

The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will,
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.

Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.

Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.

Cave-Right is the right of the Father—to hunt by himself for his own.
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.

Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of the Head Wolf is Law.

Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is—Obey!

—Rudyard Kipling

The Pickering Manuscript

Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

—William Blake

Consolation of Philosophy

Nothing Can Subdue Virtue

Whoso calm, serene, sedate,
Sets his foot on haughty fate;
Firm and steadfast, come what will,
Keeps his mien unconquered still;
Him the rage of furious seas,
Tossing high wild menaces,
Nor the flames from smoky forges
That Vesuvius disgorges,
Nor the bolt that from the sky
Smites the tower, can terrify.
Why, then, shouldst thou feel affright
At the tyrant's weakling might?
Dread him not, nor fear no harm,
And thou shall his rage disarm;
But who to hope or fear gives way—
Lost his bosom's rightful sway—
He hath cast away his shield,
Like a coward fled the field;
He hath forged all unaware
Fetters his own neck must bear!

  —Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius

Self-Mastery

Who on power sets his aim,
First must his own spirit tame;
He must shun his neck to thrust
'Neath th' unholy yoke of lust.
For, though India's far-off land
Bow before his wide command,
Utmost Thule homage pay—
If he cannot drive away
Haunting care and black distress,
In his power, he's powerless.

  —Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius

True Nobility

All men are of one kindred stock, though scattered far and wide;
For one is Father of us all—one doth for all provide.
He gave the sun his golden beams, the moon her silver horn;
He set mankind upon the earth, as stars the heavens adorn.
He shut a soul—a heaven-born soul—within the body's frame;
The noble origin he gave each mortal wight may claim.
Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line?
If ye behold your being's source, and God's supreme design,
None is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin
And cherished vice he foully stain his heavenly origin.

—Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius

Lyrical Ballads

Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

—William Wordsworth