happy valentines day poems for parents

The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood. ~Jean Cocteau, Le Rappel a l'ordre, 1926



But tell me: how did gold get to be the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and gentle in its brilliance; it always gives itself. Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold get to be the highest value. The giver's glance gleams like gold. A golden brilliance concludes peace between the moon and the sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless, it is gleaming and gentle in its brilliance: a gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue. ~Friedrich Nietzsche



Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. ~Thomas Carlyle



Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. ~La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678



He who sings frightens away his ills. ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote



Leisure is the mother of Philosophy. ~Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651



Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting. ~Dr. Seuss



We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business? ~Will Rogers



I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. ~Robert Frost, 1935



Optimists are nostalgic about the future. ~Chicago Tribune



Resting is the sort of thing you've got to work up to gradually. It's very dangerous to rest all of a sudden. ~From the movie Topper, 1937



He was the only man I ever saw who ran his own interference. ~Steve Owen, about Bronko Nagurski



Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs. ~Ambrose Bierce



We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire. ~Eric Hoffer



Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams



Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. ~Saki



Philosophy is a state of fermentation, a process without final outcome. ~Esa Saarinen



The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. ~Edgar Allan Poe



And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. ~Herman Melville, Moby-Dick



Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive. ~Juvenal, Satires