And so to bed

I usually finish my day by putting up a quotation on Facebook, prefixed by the phrase used by Samuel Pepys in his diaries, "and so to bed...". Here is a selection of recent ones.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Robert Browning:

Into the street the Piper stept,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled,
Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Marcus Tullius Cicero:

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
= Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
= Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
= Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
= Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
= Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
= Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Shel Silverstein:

Listen to the mustn'ts, child. 

Listen to the don'ts. 

Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. 

Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... 

Anything can happen, child. 

Anything can be.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Hélder Câmara:

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Amanda Craig:


All age is a kind of tiredness, I think. When you’re young, the lines never show. Every morning you wake unmarked, wiped clear by sleep. One day, though, you see lines that itch, as though some crumb of existence has been creased into your skin. They can never be smoothed away, and after a while you forget that this heavy, irritable feeling wasn’t always there.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Dorothy Day:

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Robert E. Howard:

The mighty poets write in blood and tears
And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.
They reach their mad blind hands into the night,
To plumb abysses dead to human sight;
To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled,
Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Amanda Mosher:

I love to feel the temperature drop and the wind increase just before a thunderstorm. Then I climb in bed with the thunder.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Ishmael Beah:

We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from A.E. Houseman:

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Mary Baker Eddy:

When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Munia Khan:

Let all the green leaves be mine
as long as the trees define
shades created by their limbs
for the soil made with victims
of atrocity's vileness
to redeem the fragileness