A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
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Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, and suffocated inside stifling walls. Alone you let the terrible stranger in, and stayed with her alone.
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.
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From beasts we scorn as soulless, In forest, field and den, The cry goes up to witness The soullessness of men.
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I went to a party, Mom, I remembered what you said, You told me not you drink and drive, Mom, So i drank sprit instead I felt really proud inside, Mom, The way you said I would. I didn?t drink and drive, Mom, Even though the others said i should I know i did the right thing, Mom I know you are always right. Now the party is finally ending, Mom, As everyone drives out of sight. As i got into my car, Mom, I knew i would get home in one piece Because of the way you raised me, Mom, So responsible and sweet. I started to drive away, Mom, But as I pulled onto the road The other car didn?t see me, Mom, And it hit me like a load. As I lie here on the pavement, Mom, I hear the police say, The other guy was drunk, Mom, And now I?m the one who will pay. I?m laying here dying, Mom, I wish you would get here soon. How come this happened to me, Mom? My life bursted like a ballon. There is blood all around me, Mom, Most of it is mine. I here the paramedics say, Mom, I?ll be dead in a short time. I just wanted to tell you, Mom, I swear i didn?t drink It was the others, Mom, The others didn?t think He didn?t know where he was going, Mom, He was parably at the same party as I, the only difference is, Mom He drank and I will die. Why do people drink, Mom? It can ruin my whole life. I?m feeling sharp pains now, Mom, Pains just like a knife. The guy who hit me is walking, Mom, I don?t think it?s fair. I?m lying here dying, Mom, While all he can do is stare. Tell my brother not to cry, Mom, Tell daddy to be brave. And when I get to heaven, Mom, Write ?Daddy?s Little Girl? on my grave. Someone should have told him, Mom, Not to drink and drive. If only they have taken the time, Mom I would still be alive. My breath is getting shorter, Mom I?m becoming very scared. Please don?t cry for me, Mom Because when i needed you, you were always there. I have one last question, Mom, before i say good-bye. I didnt ever drink, Mom So why am I do die? This is the end, Mom, I wish I could look you in the eyes, To say these final words, Mom, I love you, and Good-bye.
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The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard --it is absurd, unreal, dangerous. The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much.
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The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and traditions, we must save ourselves, at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solace in the memorable representation of the human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest of American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the '' plain hand of Providence '' requires him to tell Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Miss Watson and feels '' all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. '' He sits there for a while thinking '' how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell .'' Then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and friendship. '' Then I happened to look around and see that paper. . . . I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' - and tore it up .''
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The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.
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A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.
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Though a good motive cannot sanction a bad action, a bad motive will always vitiate a good action. In common and trivial matters we may act without motives, but in momentous ones the most careful deliberation is wisdom.
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I had never expected that the China initiative would come to fruition in the form of a Ping-Pong team.
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Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn't can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.
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'A medical myth is an aggressive defensive device used by orthodox medicine to retain the status quo and impede progress in the introduction of new and valuable therapies. ....The myth originates in some inadequate sloppy in vitro or animal experimental work from which unwarranted broad conclusions are drawn as to possible effects on man. There is never any hard human evidence involved, just pure speculation. The second step is that the news media pick it up and being more interested in sensationalism than in facts, magnify these speculations and terrify a gullible public. Further repetition of these unwarranted conclusions by the medical press gives them the status of medical dogma to be quoted and requoted.'--
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It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because m...
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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
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England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
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My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. (On succeeding Richard M Nixon as president)
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I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.
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I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.
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Whether or not his newspaper and a set of senses reduced to five are the main sources of the so-called "real life" of the so- called average m...
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America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt -- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.
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Goodbye, goodbye, I hate the word. Solitude has long since turned brown and withered, sitting bitter in my mouth and heavy in my veins.
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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
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Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality .
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I am...a mushroom On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.
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God gave us memories, that we might have June roses in the December of our lives.
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The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
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An American tragedy in which we all have played a part. (On Watergate, announcing pardon of former President Richard M Nixon)
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The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farm should be m...
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The sadness of the incomplete—the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
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Whether or not his newspaper and a set of senses reduced to five are the main sources of the so-called 'real life' of the so- called average m...
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