Piet Hein Quotes

Experts have their expert fun ex cathedra telling one just how nothing can be done.

The universe may be as great as they say. But it wouldn't be missed if it didn't exist.

The way to grow grand is not: to demand. In life's every field you are what you yield.

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.

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.

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.

There is one art, no more, no less: to do all things with art- lessness.

Naive you are
if you believe
life favours those
who aren't naive.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No — not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.

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.

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.

ASTRO-GYMNASTICS

Go on a starlit night,
stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
outwards into space,
and let the starry
firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
your elected base.

Feel Earth's colossal weight
of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
your strangely solid head.

Remember, things take time.

SMALL THINGS
& GREAT

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

Men, said the Devil, are good to their brothers: they don’t want to mend their own ways, but each other's.