Poetry Friday -- Think For Yourself

This week, I've done a series of 3 reviews of books on the theme THINK FOR YOURSELF. (Day Two comes with a bonus -- a link to WordEyes, a site that teaches vocabulary using art. Check it out.)

• We need to make decisions based upon what we know to be right, rather than letting others tell us what to do.
• We need to think for ourselves, rather than listening to what others tell us to think. 
• We need to love our friends for who they are, rather than believing what others tell us about them. 

Flannery O'Connor said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd."

Emily Dickinson advised

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

And Gerard Manley Hopkins famously championed all that is unique in the world:

PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                  Praise him.


What's your favorite book, quote, or poem that says to you, "THINK FOR YOURSELF!" ?


Jama has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Jama's Alphabet Soup.