Piet Hein Quotes

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

True wisdom knows it must comprise some nonsense as a compromise, lest fools should fail to find it wise.

WHO IS LEARNED? A definition

One who, consuming midnight oil
in studies diligent and slow,
teaches himself, with painful toil,
the things that other people know.

Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then stumbles over. In the whole pattern of civilization there have been two tendencies, one toward straight lines and rectangular patterns and one toward circular lines. There are reasons, mechanical and psychological, for both tendencies. Things made with straight lines fit well together and save space. And we can move easily — physically or mentally — around things made with round lines. But we are in a straitjacket, having to accept one or the other, when often some intermediate form would be better.

PRESCRIPTION

A bit
of virtue
will never
hurt you.

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.

Knowing what
Thou knowest not
Is in a sense
Omniscience.

As Eternity has reckoned
There's a lifetime in a second

Mankind

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

Put up in a place
where it is easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
T.T.T

When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb
it's well to remember that
Things Take Time.

VITA BREVIS

A lifetime
is more
than
sufficiently long
for people to get what there is of it
wrong.

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.

Wisdom is the booby prize given when you've been unwise.

Shun advice at any price - that's what I call good advice.

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.