A Few Thoughts On Thought

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last - far off - at last, to all
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light;
and with no language but a cry. - Tennyson

I have to wonder, as I sit with my sore throat and all my research books spread out around me, what makes people quote poetry? Do they really have the noble and honest desire to share beauty with one another? Or is it just hard-wired into the depths of human nature the desire to appear smarter than all the other members of our own species? It's never a good thing, I suppose, not to able to identify the cause for ones own actions. And I am inclined to think that if I try hard enough, I could seperate from myself and examine, with a critical eye, my own thought patterns; and reach some logical conclusion. But supposing that conclusion were not the desired one; would the human mind accept it? Again, I am left to ponder whether a being can accept any truth that contradicts, or show the flaws in, itself; and whether we aren't sub-consciously twisting and bending logic to fit our own selfish needs all the time. But if this were the case, how could I trust even that argument? And so, my own meager attempt at philosophy leaves me running logical circles around myself yet again.