Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum 

in which 

the exhibits are meanings 

and the words are labels. 

To switch languages is to change the labels.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, 

the police are prowling through the cities, 

the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, 

but the earth is still going round the sun.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; 

but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty.

Neither sex, 

without some fertilisation of the complementary characters of the other, 

is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour.

The struggle alone pleases us, 

not the victory.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, 

but I have felt it.

Never give up, 

for that is just the place and time 

that the tide will turn.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; 

but make it hot by striking.

He knows not his own strength 

that has not met adversity.

A man is only as good as what he loves.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong 

— especially if one is promptly found out.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, 

of which the far greater part of the members 

are poor and miserable.

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, 

he is endowing the word with life.

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, 

which not all have, 

with an uncommon sense, 

which very few have.

A man does not know what he is saying 

until he knows what he is not saying.