The Old Devils (1986)
“Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.”
Philip Larkin http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3827144.ece
About
Managing, Chapter Four (Two Organizational Structures), p. 64.
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
Source: War and Peace
“Marry women who are loving and very prolific, for I shall outnumber the peoples by you.”
Narrated Ma'qil ibn Yasar, in AbuDawud, Book 11, Number 2045
Sunni Hadith
Context: A man came to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and said: I have found a woman of rank and beauty, but she does not give birth to children. Should I marry her? He said: No. He came again to him, but he prohibited him. He came to him third time, and he (the Prophet) said: Marry women who are loving and very prolific, for I shall outnumber the peoples by you.
“As Man steps down in amiable wisdom
To give himself what no one else can give:
His liberty.”
Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
Context: That so much time was wasted in this pain.
Ten thousand years ago he might have let off down
To not return again!
A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips;
The laughter sets him free.
A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries.
The Fool is me!
And with one final shake of laughter
Breaks his bonds.
The nails fall skittering to marble floors.
And Christ, knelt at the rail, sees miracle
As Man steps down in amiable wisdom
To give himself what no one else can give:
His liberty.
"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
