
“They are both spectacular, life and death.”
"Hush," p. 61
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Big Chamber”
Variant: Life is the greatest show on earth!
Source: Water for Elephants
“They are both spectacular, life and death.”
"Hush," p. 61
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Big Chamber”
“Just a moment ago nature put on one of its most spectacular demonstrations.”
Power Of The Plus Factor (1987)
Context: Just a moment ago nature put on one of its most spectacular demonstrations. The widest rainbow I have ever seen stretched from the lake over a high snow-clad mountain to touch down in a deep valley in the Alps. There was about this gigantic rainbow a deep benediction of peace and hope. But as ineffable as nature is in the effect of natural beauty on the mind, it cannot match the peace of God in its healing effect on the human mind. <!-- p. 180
“The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.”
“It's the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.”
A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn't.
It's the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
At the conclusion of the North African Campaign in May 1943, as quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 380
Source: The Wizard of Zao (1978), Chapter 10 (p. 125)
vīkṣya tāṃ vīkṣaṇīyāmbujāsyaśriyaṃ
svaśriyaṃ śrīśriyaṃ brahmavidyāśriyam ।
dhīdhiyaṃ hrīhriyaṃ bhūbhuvaṃ bhūbhuvaṃ
rāghavaḥ prāha sallakṣaṇaṃ lakṣmaṇam ॥
Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam
“But what most showed the vanity of life
Was to behold the nations all on fire.”
Canto I, Stanza 55.
The Castle of Indolence (1748)