Груки Пита Хейна

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You'll probably find that it suits your book
To be a bit cleverer than you look.
Observe that the easiest method by far
Is to look a bit stupider than you are.
(Одно из решений житейских дилемм -
Быть чуть умней, чем вы кажетесь всем.
Есть метод иной - преимуществ не счесть -
Казаться немного глупей, чем вы есть!)

There's a miniature Springtime revealed to the eye
That notices trifles that others pass by:
In each hanging raindrop a Springtime lies curled
In a minuscule, upside-down rain-bubble world.
(Весенние микромирки открыты только тем,
Кто замечает пустяки в привычной суете.
В повисшей капле дождевой весну свернул в клубок
Повёрнутый вниз головой мир, вжатый в пузырёк)

PROBLEMS Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. THE ETERNAL TWINS Taking fun as simply fun and earnestness in earnest shows how thoroughly thou none of the two discernest. CONSOLATION GROOK Losing one glove is certainly painful, but nothing compared to the pain, of losing one, throwing away the other, and finding the first one again. When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb, it's well to remember that Things Take Time. OMNISCIENCE Knowing what thou knowest not is in a sense omniscience. HINT AND SUGGESTION Admonitory grook addressed to youth. The human spirit sublimates the impulses it thwarts; a healthy sex life mitigates the lust for other sports. DREAM INTERPRETATION Simplified. Everything's either concave or -vex, so whatever you dream will be something with sex. SOCIAL MECHANISM When people always try to take the very smallest piece of cake how can it also always be that that's the one that's left for me? A TOAST The soul may be a mere pretence, the mind makes very little sense. So let us value the appeal of that which we can taste and feel. ON PROBLEMS Our choicest plans have fallen through, our airiest castles tumbled over, because of lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over. FORETASTE WITH AFTERTASTE Corinna's scanty evening dress reveals her charms to an excess which makes a fellow lust for less. ATOMYRIADES Nature, it seems, is the popular name for milliards and milliards and milliards of particles playing their infinite game of billiards and billiards and billiards. PAST PLUPERFECT The past, -- well, it's just like our Great-Aunt Laura, who cannot or will not perceive that though she is welcome, and though we adore her, yet now it is time to leave. GROOK TO STIMULATE GRATITUDE in sour rationalists. As things so very often are intelligence won't get you far. So be glad you've got more sense than you've got intelligence. MISSING LINK Man's a kind of Missing Link, fondly thinking he can think. THE ROAD TO WISDOM The road to wisdom? -- Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. LOSING FACE The noble art of losing face may one day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace. MORE HASTE -- Inscription for a monument at the crossroads. Here lies, extinguished in his prime, a victim of modernity: but yesterday he hadn't the time -- and now he has eternity. THE CASE FOR OBSCURITY On Thoughts and Words I. If no thought your mind does visit, make your speech not too explicit. GROOK ON LONG-WINDED AUTHORS Long-winded writers I abhor, and glib, prolific chatters; give me the ones who tear and gaw their hair and pens to tatters: who find their writing such a chore they only write what matters. THE CURE FOR EXHAUSTION Sometimes, exhausted with toil and endeavour, I wish I could sleep for ever and ever; but then this reflection my longing allays: I shall be doing it one of these days. I'D LIKE -- I'd like to know what this whole show is about before it's out. A MAXIM FOR VIKINGS Here is a fact that should help you fight a bit longer: Things that don't actually kill you outright make you stronger. MAKING SENSE Life makes senses and who could doubt it, if we have no doubt about it. NOTHING IS INDESPENSABLE Grook to warn the universe against megalomania The universe may be as great as they say. But it wouldn't be missed if it didn't exist. TIME AND ETERNITY Where the woods and ploughlands of tradition and modernity run into the never-ending deserts of eternity, there I have my daily task while time smoothly passes, spooning the eternal sands into hour glasses. A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT Stomach-ache can be a curse; heart-ache may be even worse; so thank Heaven on your knees if you've got but one of these. THOUGHTS ON A STATION PLATFORM It ought to be plain how little you gain by getting excited and vexed. You'll always be late for the previous train, and always in time for the next. AN OLD SAW RESET To keep an ever-open door is wisdom's true advancer; so they are fools who don't ask more than ten wise men can answer. THE UNTENABLE ARGUMENT My adversary's argument is not alone malevolent but ignorant to boot. He hasn't even got the sense to state his so-called evidence in terms I can refute. THE WISDOM OF THE SPHERES How instructive is a star! It can teach us from afar just how small each other are. IT ISN'T ENOUGH One paramount truth our society smothers in petty concern with position and pelf: It isn't enough to exasperate others; you've got to remember to gladden yourself. WHAT LOVE IS LIKE Love is like a pineapple, sweet and undefinable. THE GRASSHOPPER'S GRIEF A fable A grasshopper sat on a flagstone and wept with a sorrow that few surpass. He had painfully mastered his letters, and leapt to a place where he knew an inscription was kept and of course it said: KEEP OFF THE GRASS SMALL THINGS AND GREAT He that lets the small things bind him leaves the great undone behind him. ABREAST He who aims to keep abreast is for ever second best. ENOUGH is more than enough Of drink and victuals and suchlike stuff a bit too little is just enough. THE STATE Nature, our father and mother, gave us all we have got. The state, our elder brother, swipes the lot. POW! That baddies are baddies is only too true, however one studies the things that they do. But what I find sad is how painfully few have noticed that goodies are too. PRESENCE OF MIND You'll conquer the present suspiciously fast if you smell of the future -- and stink of the past. THE SLOT MACHINE A contribution to the psychology of disappointment Yes, life is a gamble; but isn't it mean that you're never the one to win it, when the thing is a coin-in-the-slot machine, and you did put a shirt-button in it. TIMING TOAST Grook on how to char for yourself There's an art of knowing when. Never try to guess. Toast until it smokes and then twenty seconds less. AN ECHO FROM THE PAST Exercise for military minds Prehistoric monsters straying on a Wellsian rampage? Martian saucerers surveying their terrestrial landing stage? Say, what is that hideous braying, eloquent of fear and rage? Only Homo sapiens, playing at the pre-atomic age. FREEDOM Freedom means you're free to do just whatever pleases you; - if, of course that is to say, what you please is what you may. THE ARITHMETIC OF CO-OPERATION When you're adding up committees there's a useful rule of thumb: that talents make a difference, but follies make a sum. CONSTITUTIONAL POINT Power corrupts, whereas sound opposition builds up our free democratic tradition. One thing would make a democracy flower: having a strong opposition -- in power. THE OVERDOERS Truth shall emerge from the interplay of attitudes freely debated. Don't be mislead by fanatics who say that only one truth should be stated: truth is constructed in such a way that it can't be exaggerated. MAKING AN EFFORT Our so-called limitations, I believe, apply to faculties we don't apply. We don't discover what we can't achieve until we make an effort not to try. RHYME AND REASON There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children. She didn't know what to do. But try as she would she could never detect which was the cause and which the effect. WHAT PEOPLE MAY THINK Some people cower and wince and shrink, owing to fear of what people may think. There is one answer to worries like these: people may think what the devil they please. THE ONLY SOLUTION We shall have to evolve problem-solvers galore - since each problem they solve creates ten problems more. WIDE ROAD To make a name for learning when other roads are barred, take something very easy and make it very hard. WHEN IGNORANTS - We're leaving WISDOM to starve and thirst when we cultivate KNOWLEDGE as such. The very best comes to the very worst WHEN IGNORANTS KNOW TOO MUCH. DEAD REASONABLE "... that reason died last night at eleven." - Henrik Ibsen: "Peer Gynt" Sombody said that Reason was dead. Reason said: No, I think not so. REFLECTION ON SIZE Small people often overrate the charm of being tall; which is, that you appreciate the charm of being small. A REPROOF Grook in answer to a long explanatory letter In view of your manner of spending your days I hope you may learn, before ending them, that the effort you spend on defending your ways could better be spent on amending them. Good Advice Shun advice at any price - that's what I call good advice. THE ME ABOVE THE ME Giving in is no defeat. Passing on is no retreat. Selves are made to rise above. You shall live in what you love. SUB SPECIE - Sub specie aeternitatis even the dearest bought is gratis. WHO AM I? Who am I to deny that maybe God is me? THE ULTIMATE WISDOM Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection in knowing all the follies of mankind - by introspection. FORM AND MATERIAL A grook about the impermanence of language I see myself and what I write enclosed in an hour-glass's uppermost retort. The very stuff my patterns are composed in must fall away, and crumble down to naught. Yet stubbornly, and in despite of reason, I still believe that what is fashioned there will, when the sands run out in destined season, remain unchanged, suspended in the air. A TIP to members of the literary profession Those who can write have a lot to learn from those bright enough not to. TAUGHT We are taught to live, we are taught to feel. We are taught to conform and conceal. We are taught so well what we ought to feel that we cannot feel what we feel. THE LITTLE MERMAID'S LITTLE SISTER The Little Mermaid's Little Sister was also partly girl and cod though in a way which those who kissed her found odd. ...but which, well worth to mention, though at first sight absurd, I, with my fond intention, preferred. THE TYRANNY OF THINGS I am trying to rule over ten thousand things which I thought belonged to me. All of a sudden a doubt take wings: Do they... or could it be..? A hardhanded hunch in my mind's ear rings from whence such suspicions may stem: that if you posses more than just eight things then y o u are possessed by t h e m LOOK AND THOU SHALT FIND Foes of what's cooking see no worth behind it. Those that are looking for nothing - will find it. WHAT ARE YOU? The way to grow grand is not: to demand In life's every field you are what you yield. THE EGOCENTRICS People are self-centered to a nauseous degree. They will keep on about themselves while I'm explaining me. THRIFT Nobody can be lucky all the time; so when your luck deserts you in some fashion don't think you've been abandoned in your prime, but rather that you're saving up your ration. CAPACITY A contribution to the psychology of disappointment Some people live in a dream of what'll allow them to live their dream: they solemnly hold out a half-pint bottle and ask for a pint of cream. THAT WEARY FEELING Do you know that weary feeling when your mind is strangely strangled and your head is like a ball of wool that's very, very tangled; and the tempo of your thinking must be lenient and mild, as though you were explaining to a very little child. ONE'S OWN WEATHER You're squandering spleen on your brothers, and wasting good self-pity too, if you think that there's sun on the others whenever it's raining on you. TWO PASSIVISTS Eradicate the optimist who takes the easy view that human values will persist no matter what we do. Annihilate the pessimist whose ineffectual cry is that the goal's already missed however hard we try. THE CENTRAL POINT A philosophistry I am the Universe's Centre. No subtle sceptics can confound me; for how can other viewpoints enter, when all the rest is all around me? MOUSE AND MAN A relativistic grook on co-existence A human being sharing with a mouse. Each thinks himself the master of the house. In fact, of course, each occupier's place is the other's insulating interspaces. THREE FACTS ABOUT TRAFFIC Three facts, quite easy, should be known to all would-be arrivers who set out on wheels: that roads are greasy, safety margins small, and fellow drivers fellow imbeciles. VITA BREVIS A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong. LAST THINGS FIRST Solutions to problems are easy to find: the problem's a great contribution. What's truly an art is to wring from your mind a problem to fit a solution. ORIGINALITY Original thought is a straightforward process. It's easy enough when you know what to do. You simply combine in appropriate doses the blatantly false and the patently true. WISDOM IS - Wisdom is the booby prize given when you've been unwise. WANTING TO BE ABLE TO 'Impossibilities' are good not to attach that label to; since, correctly understood, if we wanted to, we would be able to be able to. GROOK ABOUT FAITH, HOPE, ETC. She gave me hope she gave me love, with bounty unalloyed. But what she had of faith, alas, she gave to Freud. PRESCRIPTION A bit of virtue will never hurt you. NOVELTY For me there is something ineffably new in every new moment's arising; and even the things I habitually do have qualities new and surprising. There's nothing that happens that happened before in exactly that way in its life. When you're playing the piano, it's rather a bore; but it's nice when you're kissing your wife. REMEDIES' REMEDIES Pills are useful against ills and against too many pills. WE DO OUR BEST Or do we? Modern man has the skill; he can do what he will. But alas - being man he will do what he can. SIMILARITY (Commutative Law) No cow's like a horse, and no horse like a cow. That's one similarity anyhow. BUDGETING: THE FIRST LAW If you want to know where your money went, you must spend it quickly before it's spent. ON AN ASHTRAY When your thirst

and hunger cease, may your ashes rest in peace.

Alex Pup: while still breathing ...