Piet Hein

CANDLE WISDOM

If you knew
what you will know
when your candle
has burnt low,
it would greatly
ease your plight
while your candle
still burns bright.

Co-existence or no existence.

As eternity is reckoned there's a lifetime in a second.

BRAVE

To be brave is to behave
bravely when your heart is faint.
So you can be really brave
only when you really ain't.

A via da sabedoria é fácil de indicar: - errar, errar, errar! Fazer erros grandes e pequenos, mas sempre menos, sempre menos.

REFLECTION ON SIZE

Small people often overrate
the charm of being tall;
which is, that you appreciate
the charm of being small.

We ought to live each day as though
it were our last day here below.
But if I did, alas, I know
it would have killed me long ago.

Put up in a place where it's easy to see the cryptic admonishment T.T.T.</p>When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb, it's well to remember that Things Take Time.

I am a humble artist moulding my earthly clod, adding my labour to nature's, simply assisting God. Not that my labour is needed, yet somehow I understand, my Maker has deemed it that I too should have Unmoulded clay in my hand.

PRESCRIPTION

A bit
of virtue
will never
hurt you.

ON PROBLEMS

Our choicest plans
have fallen through,
our airiest castles
tumbled over,
because of lines
we neatly drew
and later neatly
stumbled over.

THE FINAL TOUCH
Portrait of nobody in particular

Idiots are really
one hundred per cent
when they are also
intelligent.

SMALL THINGS
& GREAT

He that lets
the small things bind him
leaves the great
undone behind him.

I'd like to know
what this whole show
is all about
before it's out.

Somebody said that Reason was dead. Reason said: No, I think not so.