The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.
“And when you stick on conversation’s burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.”
A rhymed Lesson. Urania; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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Oliver Wendell Holmes 135
Poet, essayist, physician 1809–1894Related quotes
“If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies.”
Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 6
“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watch out for those damn words.”
Variant: Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.
Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14
Keynote address at the 2002 "Animal Rights" conference http://www.peta.org/feat/conference/
2002
Viktor Schauberger in 1936 - from Spec. Ed. Mensch und Technik, Vol. 2, 1993, section 4.1. (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Mensch und Technik
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 275
“Don't be too quick
To break bad habits: better stick,
Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.”
East and West Poems, Part I, The Wonderful Spring of San Joaquin.