Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.

Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.