Quotes from Piet Hein

We ought to live each day as though it were our last day here below. But if I did, alas, I know it would have killed me long ago.

MAKING AN EFFORT Our so-called limitations, I believe, apply to faculties we don't apply. We don't discover what we can't achieve until we make an effort not to try.

Those who always know what's best are a universal pest.

THE CURE FOR EXHAUSTION Sometimes, exhausted with toil and endeavour, I wish I could sleep for ever and ever; but then this reflection my longing allays: I shall be doing it one of these days.

THE WISDOM OF THE SPHERES How instructive is a star! It can teach us from afar just how small each other are.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny. No -- not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping.

Lovers meander in prose and rhyme, trying to say- for the thousandth time- what's easier done than said.

It isn't enough to exasperate others. You have to remember to gladden yourself!

ASTRO-GYMNASTICS Go on a starlit night, stand on your head, leave your feet dangling outwards into space, and let the starry firmament you tread be, for the moment, your elected base. Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite, of molten magma, water, iron, and lead; and briefly hold this strangely solid planet balanced upon your strangely solid head.

THE FINAL TOUCH Portrait of nobody in particular Idiots are really one hundred per cent when they are also intelligent.

ON PROBLEMS Our choicest plans have fallen through, our airiest castles tumbled over, because of lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over.

PRESCRIPTION A bit of virtue will never hurt you.

SMALL THINGS & GREAT He that lets the small things bind him leaves the great undone behind him.

ABREAST He who aims to keep abreast is for ever second best.

A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT Stomach-ache can be a curse; heart-ache may be even worse; so thank Heaven on your knees if you've got but one of these.

Living is a thing you do now or never -- which do you?

DREAM INTERPRETATION Simplified. Everything's either concave or -vex, so whatever you dream will be something with sex.

Mankind Men, said the Devil, are good to their brothers: they don't want to mend their own ways, but each other's.

REFLECTION ON SIZE Small people often overrate the charm of being tall; which is, that you appreciate the charm of being small.

Hvis man regner med belønning for sin godhed, er det ikke godhed, men beregning.

BRAVE To be brave is to behave bravely when your heart is faint. So you can be really brave only when you really ain't.

VITA BREVIS A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong.

WHO IS LEARNED? A definition One who, consuming midnight oil in studies diligent and slow, teaches himself, with painful toil, the things that other people know.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF GASTRONOMY There's a rule for proper doses in the dinner-eaters lore: one should stop the filling process while one still has room for more. And if someone at the table had reminded me before - Hallelujah! I'd be able to absorb a little more.