Favourite quotes and poems

• Sometimes when you lose your way in the fog, you end up in a beautiful place! Don’t be afraid of getting lost!

• The map? I will first make it.

• I am compelled into this country.

• The Road Not Taken

  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both, And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth.

  Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as far that the passing there Had worn them really about the same.

  And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

  I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.

• If

  If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

  If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!'

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

• Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

• If I cannot sway the heavens, I’ll wake the powers of hell!

  Original quote in Latin: Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.