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Quotes & Verse

3rd September, 2010

  Quotes & Verse
It is good to know I am in such prestigious company as these atheist commentators of repute and intellect.......

________o O o _______

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. - George Bernard Shaw

It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous. - Gloria Steinem

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. - Ferdinand Magellan

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Edward Gibbon

The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. - Sigmund Freud

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. - Denis Diderot

Faith means not wanting to know what is true. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. - Benjamin Franklin

All thinking men are atheists. - Ernest Hemingway

I don't believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. - Andrew Carnegie

______o O o ______

I fancy a bit of romance this evening, only in print I hasten to add as my knee is killing me having twisted it.....And I can think of nothing much nicer than the delightful poem by John Betjeman and so beautifully put to song by David Essex.

______o O o ______

Kind o'er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,
White o'er the playpen the sheen of her dress,
Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery
Soap scented fingers I long to caress.

Were you a prefect and head of your dormit'ry?
Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?
Who was your favourite? Who had a crush on you?
Which were the baths where they taught you to swim?

Smooth down the Avenue glitters the bicycle,
Black-stockinged legs under navy blue serge,
Home and Colonial, Star, International,
Balancing bicycle leant on the verge.

Trace me your wheel-tracks, you fortunate bicycle,
Out of the shopping and into the dark,
Back down the avenue, back to the pottingshed,
Back to the house on the fringe of the park.

Golden the light on the locks of Myfanwy,
Golden the light on the book on her knee,
Finger marked pages of Rackham's Hans Anderson,
Time for the children to come down to tea.

Oh! Fullers angel-cake, Robertson's marmalade,
Liberty lampshade, come shine on us all,
My! what a spread for the friends of Myfanwy,
Some in the alcove and some in the hall.

Then what sardines in half-lighted passages!
Locking of fingers in long hide-and-seek.
You will protect me, my silken Myfanwy,
Ring leader, tom-boy, and chum to the weak.

 
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