If You Think I'm One

If You Think I'm One Of The People Who Try To Be Funny At Breakfast You're Wrong. I'm Invariably Illtempered In The Early Morning.

...but I Should Say That Kindliness, And Sincerity, And If I May Say So--modesty--are Worth Far More To A Man, To A Husband, Than All The Wit And Beauty In The World.

We Know One Another. This Is The Present. There Is No Past And No Future. Here I Am Washing My Hands, And The Cracked Mirror Shows Me To Myself, Suspended As It Were, In Time; This Is Me, This Moment Will Not Pass.

They Are Not Brave, The Days When We Are Twenty-one. They Are Full Of Little Cowardices, Little Fears Without Foundation, And One Is So Easily Bruised, So Swiftly Wounded, One Falls To The First Barbed Word. To-day, Wrapped In The Complacent Armour Of Approaching Middle Age, The Infinitesimal Pricks Of Day By Day Brush One But Lightly And Are Soon Forgotten, But Then—how A Careless Word Would Linger, Becoming A Fiery Stigma, And How A Look, A Glance Over A Shoulder, Branded Themselves As Things Eternal.

If There’s One Thing That Makes A Man Sick, It’s To Have His Ale Poured Out Of An Ugly Hand.