Small Drains

Famous quotes containing the words small and/or drains:

    Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quite well developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don’t think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you’ll see what I mean.
    Northrop Frye (1912–1991)

    I change, and so do women too;
    But I reflect—which women seldom do.
    Tobacco is a filthy weed,
    That from the devil doth proceed;
    That drains your purse, that burns your clothes,
    That makes a chimney of your nose.
    —Anonymous. “Written on a Looking Glass,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber (1977)