An Unfair Advantage

“An Unfair Advantage” by Elizabeth Howell Ingham from Century magazine, 1908

Courage

“It is hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffing slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.”

– Winnie-the-Pooh

A Little Something

“Pooh went back to his own house, and feeling very proud of what he had done, had a little something to revive himself.”

– A.A. Milne in Winne-the-Pooh

Upstairs

Let it rain!
Who cares?
I’ve a train
Upstairs.

– A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six

Leningrad? Beirut? Sarajevo?

“The caves were plainly becoming a necessity, as some persons had been killed on the street by fragments of shells. The room that I had so lately slept in had been struck by a fragment of a shell during the first night, and a large hole made in the ceiling. I shall never forget my extreme fear during the night, and my utter hopelessness of ever seeing the morning light. Terror stricken, we remained crouched in the cave, while shell after shell followed each other in quick succession. I endeavored by constant prayer to prepare myself for the sudden death I was almost certain awaited me. My heart stood still as we would hear the reports from the guns, and the rushing and fearful sound of the shell as it came toward us. As it neared, the noise became more deafening; the air was full of the rushing sound; pains darted through my temples; my ears were full of the confusing noise; and, as it exploded, the report flashed through my head like an electric shock, leaving me in a quiet state of terror the most painful I can imagine–cowering in a corner, holding my child to my heart–the only feeling of life being the choking throbs of my heart, that rendered me almost breathless.”

– Mary Webster Loughborough in My Cave Life in Vicksburg (1864)

About the Ending

“You’ve got to go on and off with a bang. From the audience’s point of view, though, the ending is more important than the beginning. You’ve got to know where the hell you’re going. If you mess up the ending, it’s over. You’ve just signed your death warrant.”

– Les Paul, in Guitar Player Magazine, August 1984

More Advice

“If you try to talk to the bison, he never quite understands.”

– A.A. Milne in When We Were Very Young

Sage Advice

He gets what exercise he can
By falling off the ottoman.

– A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

A Basket of Chips

“Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighboring lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow.

“He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where it is. Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pursues. It is to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home.

“Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips.”

– Henry David Thoreau, in a journal entry of November 28, 1859, collected in Men of Concord (1936) with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth

A Murder of Them

“They sit in the trees and on the electric wires and on the roofs and they watch everything, the sinister little bastards.”

– Enzo the dog, on crows, in The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein