#nursery

The world is a wide place where we stumble like children learning to walk. The world is a bright mosaic where we learn like children to see, where our little blurry eyes strive greedily to take in as much light and love and colour and detail as they can. The world is a coaxing whisper when the wind lips the trees, when the sea licks the shore, when animals burrow into earth and people look up at the sympathetic stars. The world is an admonishing roar when gales chase rainclouds over the plains and whip up ocean waves, when people crowd into cities or intrude into dazzling jungles. What right have we to carry our desperate mouths up mountains or into deserts? Do we want to taste rock and sand or do we expect to make impossible poems from space and silence? The vastness at least reminds us how tiny we are, and how much we don't yet understand. We are mere babes in the universe, all brothers and sisters in the nursery together. We had better learn to play nicely before we're allowed out..... And we want to go out, don't we? ..... Into the distant humming welcoming darkness. ↗

— Jay Woodman

#babes #brothers #children #cities #colour

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon. ↗

— Edward Lear

#happiness #nursery-rhymes #happy

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. ↗

— Bobby McFerrin

#begin #black #blues #dark #house

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life. ↗

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

#broken #happy #his #life #loved

I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#fairy-tales #imagination #nursery-rhymes #storytelling #education

Nursery-rhyme morality has gotten me into no end of trouble, largely because it is presented through such fine poetry. Nursery rhymes dramatize the eternal conflict between aesthetics and ethics in a manner that every child can appreciate. There isn’t an adult walking around today that hasn’t been psychologically devastated by them. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #morality #nursery-rhymes #poetry

This little piggy went to Hades This little piggy stayed home This little piggy ate raw and steaming human flesh This little piggy violated virgins And this little piggy clambered over a heap of dead bodies to get to the top ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#hades #humor #nursery-rhymes #piggy #pigs

Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posie. Ashes ashes, we all fall down. Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people... Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense... How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree? Because I ate the kid who made it up. ↗

— Scott Westerfeld

#peeps #death

They dined on mince, and slices of quince Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon. ↗

— Edward Lear

#love #nursery-rhyme #love

Reluctantly, I pulled out my necklace and showed it to them. Samuel frowned. The little figure was stylized; I suppose he couldn't tell what it was at first. A dog?" asked Zee, staring at my necklace. A lamb," I said defensively, tucking it safely back under my shirt. "Because one of Christ's names is "The Lamb of God."" Samuel's shoulders shook slightly. "I can see it now, Mercy holding a roomful of vampire at bay with her glowing sheep." I gave his shoulder a hard push, aware of the heat climbing to my cheeks, but it didn't help. He sang in a soft taunting voice, "Mercy had a little lamb... ↗

— Patricia Briggs

#nursery-rhyme #samuel #vampires #zee #christ