Quotes about death
page 52
1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)
All Things Censored (2001, Seven Stories Press), pp. 55-56
Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)
Source: 1970's, I Am Searching For Field Character,' 1973/74, p. 48
Who'll mourn her as one of Lot's family members?
Doesn't she seem the smallest of losses to us?
But deep in my heart I will always remember
One who gave her life up for one single glance.
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996)
A loss, but who still mourns the breath
of one woman, or laments one wife?
Though my heart never can forget,
how, for one look, she gave up her life.
Translated by A.S.Kline
Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
Translator unknown
Lot's Wife
Quote from a conversation with Jan Thorn-Prikker concerning the '18 October 1977 cycle' [R.A.F.], 1989; as cited on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Baader-meinhof' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/october-18-1977baader-meinhof-11
1980's
Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 585
Sunni Hadith
An introduction to this book
The Religion of God (2000)
“I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.”
Night on the Prairies
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
"On the Fear of Death"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)
Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 27, p. 488
Moses and Monotheism (1938)
1930s
Narrator, p. 168
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)
Elmira Star Gazette (1973), Interview with Jane Roberts, quoted on p. 14 of Susan M. Watkins' Speaking of Jane Roberts (2001)
“Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”
Phrixus, Frag. 830
late note of Berthe Morisot, c. 1892-1895; as cited in Berthe Morisot, Jean-Dominique Rey; translation in English, Flammarion, S.A. (ISBN: 978-2-08-020345-8), Paris, 2016, p. 133
1881 - 1895
Quoted in 2008 article. [about the death of soldiers, January 2008]
Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 19 : The Marketplace
pg. 285
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment
“Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it.”
The Crock of Gold (Charleston: BiblioBazaar, [1912] 2006) p. 27.
Part 1, Chapter 10 (p. 57)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)
As quoted in European Civilization and Politics Since 1815 (1938) by Erik Achorn, p. 723. amd in his obituary in The New York Times (19 April 1955)
Variant translation: I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
As quoted in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 186
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 3, “Doorways” (p. 19; the first sentence is echoed on p. 273)
“A good death does honor to a whole life.”
Un bel morir tutta la vita honora.
Canzone 207 (c. 1348), st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 254.
"Monastic Interlude" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/4.htm
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
Act II
The Three Sisters (1901)
“Life and death have been lacking in my life.”
Prologue
Discussion (1932)
“A glorious death is his
Who for his country falls.”
XV. 496–497 (tr. Lord Derby); spoken by Hector.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 121.
Ine weiz, wie jener werden sol;
dirre tôt der tuot mir wol.
solte diu wunneclîche Isôt
iemer alsus sî mîn tôt,
sô wolte ich gerne werben
umbe ein êweclîchez sterben.
Source: Tristan, Line 12497
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937).
1937
The Telling of Me, by Me (1981)
“Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don’t forget.”
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)
“Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.”
A Vision of Poets (1844)
"The War Speeches of William Pitt", Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 7
Speech in the House of Commons, 21 February 1783, on the peace treaty with the United States. Pitt, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, knew the government would lose the vote and he would have to resign.
Astrology Karma & Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart (1992, ISBN: 0-916360-54-7)
Preface by Karl Pearson
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)
After being wounded during the attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife (24 July 1797), as quoted in The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson with Notes (1845) edited Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Vol. II : 1795-1797, p. 423
1790s
. . . . . . o grande Cavaleiro,
Que ao vento velas deu na ocídua parte,
E lá, onde infante o Sol dá luz primeiro,
Fixou das Quinas santas o Estandarte.
E com afronta do infernal guerreiro,
(Mercê do Céu) ganhou por força, e arte
O áureo Reino, e trocou com pio exemplo
A profana mesquita em sacro templo.
* * * *
O tempo chega, Afonso, em que a santa
Sião terá por vós a liberdade,
A Monarquia, que hoje o Céu levanta,
Devoto consagrando à eternidade.
Ó bem nascida generosa planta,
Que em flor fruto há-de dar à Cristandade,
E matéria a mil cisnes, que, cantando
De vós, se irão convosco eternizando.<p>De Cristo a injusta morte vingou Tito
Na de Jerusalém total ruína:
E a vós, a quem Deus deu um peito invito,
Ser vingador de sua Fé destina.
Extinguir do Agareno o falso rito
É de vosso valor a empresa dina:
Tomai pois o bastão da empresa grande
Para o tempo que o Céu marchar vos mande.
Malaca Conquistada pelo grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1634) — quoted in The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Vol. III (London, 1880) https://archive.org/stream/no62works01hakluoft#page/n13/mode/2up, and translated by Edgar C. Knowlton Jr. http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/library/conquestofmalacca.pdf
Introduction to The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death (2006).
Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 24 "I Suffer the Heathen's Rage"
From Trotsky to Tito (1951)
2007 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)
Referring to the figure of the prostitute.
Source: A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), Chapter 5 (3rd edition pages 282-283).
“Here closed in death th' attentive eyes
That saw the manners in the face.”
Epitaph on Hogarth (1786)
Letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968.
Other
Bill Gorton to Jake Barnes, in Book 2, Ch. 12
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
“There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre.”
Sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit,
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
IV, vii, 1.
Elegies
Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 12
“By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.”
Nec prorsum vitam ducendo demimus hilum
tempore de mortis nec delibare valemus.
Book III, lines 1087–1088 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 72
Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting [C'est dans la connaissance des conditions authentiques de notre vie qu'il nous faut puiser la force de vivre et des raisons d'agir].
No Coward Soul Is Mine (1846)
Context: p>With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.Though earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou — Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.</p
Guardian Galenor in Ch 43 : various pursuits<!-- 418 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: People allow themselves to believe an event if it's called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it's called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstasy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts…
No. 25 (29 March 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
“Oh! Death would take so much from us, how should we not fear?”
From De Profundis
Context: But we of the rich plain of sweet airs and pure,
Oh! Death would take so much from us, how should we not fear?
Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Context: Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependance on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity." It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of externalization and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...
The Efficacy of Prayer (1958)
Context: Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate. It would be even worse to think of those who get what they pray for as a sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that. And I dare not leave out the hard saying which I once heard from an experienced Christian: “I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.” Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best? Well, He who served Him best of all said, near His tortured death, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” When God becomes man, that Man, of all others, is least comforted by God, at His greatest need. There is a mystery here which, even if I had the power, I might not have the courage to explore. Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 96
Sendak here quotes from King Lear by William Shakespeare : Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative. And also, I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid … Where we just had fun. What I mean by this is I've had my career. I've had my success. God willing, it should have happened to Herman Melville who deserved it a great deal more, you know? Imagine him being on Bill Moyers' show. Nothing good happened to Herman Melville. I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. "Ripeness is all." Now, interpreting what ripeness is our own individual problem. … So, what is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe.
"There is no free will, but you have a choice! (And the role of memes in choice-creation)" in Handbags and Lingo (3 November 2013) http://anand.memesyslab.com/2013/11/there-is-no-free-will-but-you-have.html<!-- INKTalks -->
Context: The promise of survival beyond individual death or dispersion appeals to the most primal driving force of existence. Promises of transcendence have evolved out of the thriving desire to ward off the inevitable threat of individual death. Most systems propose a more or less perfect immortality – one where memories, hopes, desires, knowledge and even experiences survive the death of the physical body. An engagement and acceptance of this meme makes death particularly irrelevant. The upholding of the promise at the cost of individual sacrifice becomes acceptable. Individual sacrifices even become necessary in validating the promise.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), II
Context: When I was a young writer there had been a stage where Camus, almost more than any other contemporary literary figure, radically set the tone for my own view of life and history. I read his novel The Stranger somewhat later than I should have — I was in my early thirties — but after finishing it I received the stab of recognition that proceeds from reading the work of a writer who has wedded moral passion to a style of great beauty and whose unblinking vision is capable of frightening the soul to its marrow. The cosmic loneliness of Meursault, the hero of that novel, so haunted me that when I set out to write The Confessions of Nat Turner I was impelled to use Camus’s device of having the story flow from the point of view of a narrator isolated in his jail cell during the hours before his execution. For me there was a spiritual connection between Meursault’s frigid solitude and the plight of Nat Turner — his rebel predecessor in history by a hundred years — likewise condemned and abandoned by man and God. Camus’s essay “Reflections on the Guillotine” is a virtually unique document, freighted with terrible and fiery logic; it is difficult to conceive of the most vengeful supporter of the death penalty retaining the same attitude after exposure to scathing truths expressed with such ardor and precision. I know my thinking was forever altered by that work, not only turning me around completely, convincing me of the essential barbarism of capital punishment, but establishing substantial claims on my conscience in regard to matters of responsibility at large. Camus was a great cleanser of my intellect, ridding me of countless sluggish ideas, and through some of the most unsettling pessimism I had ever encountered causing me to be aroused anew by life’s enigmatic promise.
“Euryalus
In death went reeling down,
And blood streamed on his handsome length, his neck
Collapsing let his head fall on his shoulder—
As a bright flower cut by a passing plow
Will droop and wither slowly, or a poppy
Bow its head upon its tired stalk
When overborne by a passing rain.”
Volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artus
It cruor inque umeros cervix conlapsa recumbit:
Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo
Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.
Compare:
Μήκων δ' ὡς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν, ἥ τ' ἐνὶ κήπῳ
καρπῷ βριθομένη νοτίῃσί τε εἰαρινῇσιν,
ὣς ἑτέρωσ' ἤμυσε κάρη πήληκι βαρυνθέν.
He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy
bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime;
so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.
Homer, Iliad, VIII, 306–308 (tr. R. Lattimore)
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IX, Lines 433–437 (tr. Fitzgerald)
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)
Context: The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present — they are real.
“O death that dividest brothers knit together in love, how cruel, how ruthless you are so to sunder them!”
O mors quae fratres dividis, et amore societos, crudelis ac dura dissocias.
Letter 60; Translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001.htm
Letters
“But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.”
"A Tribe to Eban C. Ingersoll" (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38812/38812-h/38812-h.htm
Context: Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud — and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.
St. 2
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)
Context: "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: General Phil Sheridan... had urged the destruction of the bison herds, correctly predicting that when they disappeared the Indians would disappear along with them; by 1885 the bison were virtually extinct, and the Indians were starving to death on the plains.... the Indian Wars finally ended; and with the enforced peace came an economic recession in the West, for the United States government had spent there about one million dollars for every Indian killed by 1870.
Message to the Tricontinental (1967)
Context: Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory.
“It taught that the business of this life was to prepare for death.”
A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)
Context: It taught that the business of this life was to prepare for death. It insisted that a certain belief was necessary to insure salvation, and that all who failed to believe, or doubted in the least would suffer eternal pain. According to the church the natural desires, ambitions and passions of man were all wicked and depraved. To love God, to practice self-denial, to overcome desire, to despise wealth, to hate prosperity, to desert wife and children, to live on roots and berries, to repeat prayers, to wear rags, to live in filth, and drive love from the heart—these, for centuries, were the highest and most perfect virtues, and those who practiced them were saints. The saints did not assist their fellow-men. Their fellow-men assisted them. They did not labor for others. They were beggars—parasites—vermin. They were insane. They followed the teachings of Christ. They took no thought for the morrow. They mutilated their bodies—scarred their flesh and destroyed their minds for the sake of happiness in another world. During the journey of life they kept their eyes on the grave.
Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 10 (p. 187)
Context: Given how many convicts awaiting capital punishment have been cleared because of DNA evidence, I no longer support the death penalty. Minnesota doesn't have this on the books, so I'm thankful that, as governor, I never had to face the decision of whether to execute someone on death row. Again, I simply don't believe that government has the inherent right to make those kinds of choices.
Author's Remarks.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (2003)
Context: I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand religious sects — each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain — which doesn't strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why — which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive.
Preface
Sackett's Land (1974)
Context: We are all of us, it has been said, the children of immigrants and foreigners — even the American Indian, although he arrived here a little earlier. What a man is and what he becomes is in part due to his heritage, and the men and women who came west did not emerge suddenly from limbo. Behind them were ancestors, families, and former lives. Yet even as the domestic cattle of Europe evolved into the wild longhorns of Texas, so the American pioneer had the characteristics of a distinctive type.
Physically and psychologically, the pioneers' need for change had begun in the old countries with their decision to migrate. In most cases their decisions were personal, ordered by no one else. Even when migration was ordered or forced, the people who survived were characterized by physical strength, the capacity to endure, and not uncommonly, a rebellious nature.
History is not made only by kings and parliaments, presidents, wars, and generals. It is the story of people, of their love, honor, faith, hope and suffering; of birth and death, of hunger, thirst and cold, of loneliness and sorrow. In writing my stories I have found myself looking back again and again to origins, to find and clearly see the ancestors of the pioneers.
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 53-54
Source: Life of Pythagoras, Ch. 2 : Youth, Education, Travels
Context: After his father's death, though he was still but a youth, his aspect was so venerable, and his habits so temperate that he was honored and even reverenced by elderly men, attracting the attention of all who saw and heard him speak, creating the most profound impression. That is the reason that many plausibly asserted that he was a child of the divinity. Enjoying the privilege of such a renown, of an education so thorough from infancy, and of so impressive a natural appearance he showed that he deserved all these advantages by deserving them, by the adornment of piety and discipline, by exquisite habits, by firmness of soul, and by a body duly subjected to the mandates of reason. An inimitable quiet and serenity marked all his words and actions, soaring above all laughter, emulation, contention, or any other irregularity or eccentricity; his influence at Samos was that of some beneficent divinity. His great renown, while yet a youth, reached not only men as illustrious for their wisdom as Thales at Miletus, and Bias at Prione, but also extended to the neighboring cities. He was celebrated everywhere as the "long-haired Samian," and by the multitude was given credit for being under divine inspiration.
" My Philanthropic Pledge http://givingpledge.org/pdf/letters/Buffett_Letter.pdf" at the The Giving Pledge (2010)
Context: More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death. Measured by dollars, this commitment is large. In a comparative sense, though, many individuals give more to others every day.
Millions of people who regularly contribute to churches, schools, and other organizations thereby relinquish the use of funds that would otherwise benefit their own families. The dollars these people drop into a collection plate or give to United Way mean forgone movies, dinners out, or other personal pleasures. In contrast, my family and I will give up nothing we need or want by fulfilling this 99% pledge.
Moreover, this pledge does not leave me contributing the most precious asset, which is time. Many people, including — I’m proud to say — my three children, give extensively of their own time and talents to help others. Gifts of this kind often prove far more valuable than money.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme.
Context: Here enter not attorneys, barristers,
Nor bridle-champing law-practitioners:
Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees,
Wilful disturbers of the people's ease:
Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,
Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death.
Your salary is at the gibbet-foot:
Go drink there! for we do not here fly out
On those excessive courses, which may draw
A waiting on your courts by suits in law.
“I'm dancing in the shadows of life
And death is all around me tonight”
Whaler (1994), Right Beside You
Context: I'm dancing in the shadows of life
And death is all around me tonight
I miss you making love to me right
Beside myself I'm holding you tight
Someone is waiting for me to rise
And drive into the ocean I cried
And I cried and I cried my baby to sleep
Beside myself my soul to keep Right beside you I see
Right beside you I stay
Right beside you I'll be
Right beside you always.
"Memorial Day"; this poem was later published in The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920)
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Context: The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray. The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky. Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right. May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace... Who brought a sword.</p
Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 5; speech of Lt. Collins, the commander of the San Pablo to his crew at the start of summer cruising on the Yangtze River
Context: "Tomorrow we begin our summer cruising to show the flag on Tungting lake and the Hunan rivers," he said. "At home in America, when today reaches them, it will be Flag Day. They will gather to do honor and hear speeches. For us who wear the uniform, every day is Flag Day. We pay our honor in act and feeling and we have little need of words. But on this one day it will not hurt us to grasp briefly in words the meaning of our flag. That is what I want to talk about this morning.
"Our flag is the symbol of America. I want you to grasp what America really is," Lt. Collins said, nodding for emphasis. "It is more than marks on a map. It is more than buildings and land. America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be. We in San Pablo are collectively only a tiny, momentary bit of that structure. How can we, standing here, grasp the whole of America?" He made a grasping motion. "Think now of a great cable," he said, and made a circle with his arms. "The cable has no natural limiting length. It can be spun out forever. We can unlay it into ropes, and the ropes, into strands, and the strands into yarns, and none of them have any natural ending. But now let us pull a yarn apart into single fibers —" he made plucking motions with his fingers " — and each man of us can find himself. Each fiber is a tiny, flat, yellowish thing, a foot or a yard long by nature. One American life from birth to death is like a single fiber. Each one is spun into the yarn of a family and the strand of a home town and the rope of a home state. The states are spun into the great, unending, unbreakable cable that is America."
His voice deepened on the last words. He paused, to let them think about it....
"No man, not even President Coolidge, can experience the whole of America directly," Lt. Collins resumed. "We can only feel it when the strain comes on, the terrible strain of hauling our history into a stormy future. Then the cable springs taut and vibrant. It thins and groans as the water squeezes out and all the fibers press each to each in iron hardness. Even then, we know only the fibers that press against us. But there is another way to know America."
He paused for a deep breath. The ranks were very quiet.
"We can know America through our flag which is its symbol," he said quietly. "In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment....
"Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth," Lt. Collins was saying. "It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible."
Introduction : The Libertarian Tradition
Communalism (1974)
Context: The contemporary world is being pulled apart by two contrary tendencies — one toward social death, one toward the birth of a new society. Many of the phenomena of the present crisis are ambivalent and can either mean death or birth depending on how the crisis is resolved.
The crisis of a civilization is a mass phenomenon and moves onward without benefit of ideology. The demand for freedom, community, life significance, the attack on alienation, is largely inchoate and instinctive. In the libertarian revolutionary movement these objectives were ideological, confined to books, or realized with difficulty, usually only temporarily in small experimental communities, or in individual lives and tiny social circles. It has been said of the contemporary revolutionary wave that it is a revolution without theory, anti-ideological. But the theory, the ideology, already exists in a tradition as old as capitalism itself. Furthermore, just as individuals specially gifted have been able to live free lives in the interstices of an exploitative, competitive system, so in periods when the developing capitalist system has temporarily and locally broken down due to the drag of outworn forms there have existed brief revolutionary honeymoons in which freer communal organization has prevailed. Whenever the power structure falters or fails the general tendency is to replace it with free communism. This is almost a law of revolution. In every instance so far, either the old power structure, as in the Paris Commune or the Spanish Civil War, or a new one, as in the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, has suppressed these free revolutionary societies with wholesale terror and bloodshed.
Notes to his mother, on The Life of Humanity (1884-6) http://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-moreau/humanity-the-golden-age-depicting-three-scenes-from-the-lives-of-adam-and-eve-the-silver-age-1886, his composition of a ten image polyptych, p. 48 · Photo of its exhibition on the 3rd Floor of Musée National Gustave Moreau http://en.musee-moreau.fr/house-museum/studios/third-floor
Gustave Moreau (1972)
St. 4
Tears, Idle Tears (1850)
Preface to Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)
Context: And what, you ask, does writing teach us?
First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
“The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead”
The Dark Angel (1895)
Context: p>I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.</p