“The big belly can accommodate all kinds of things. The benevolence never left a dust behind.”

The Dream
Song lyrics, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (2010)

In an interview to the World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day (3 May 2004)
Context: It's an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. That should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it's become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it's "difficult" justify our own inaction. Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don't have is the will, and that's not a reason that history will accept.

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 258

Source: Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika

Compare: "We come with the dust and we go with the wind." Woody Guthrie, Pastures of Plenty.
Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Song to Woody

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

"This Is Not a Test".
She & Him : Volume One (2008)
Context: For those of you who thought you'd be forgotten,
The friends you've made will try their best, to make it so.
Think of all the beauty that you left behind you.
You can take it if you want it, and then let it go.

A Winter Night (1787)

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest
Context: the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,—a business often of enormous difficulty.