“Our times are still not safe and sane enough
for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”
"Smiles"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Context: The going's rough, and so we need the laugh
of bright incisors, molars of goodwill.
Our times are still not safe and sane enough
for faces to show ordinary sorrow.
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Wisława Szymborska 92
Polish writer 1923–2012Related quotes
“Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.”
Source: How To Write Science Fiction
“Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy,
It is not safe to know.”
The Just Italian (licensed Oct. 2, 1629; printed 1630), Act v. Sc. 1.
Compare: "From ignorance our comfort flows", Matthew Prior, To the Hon. Charles Montague; "Where ignorance is bliss, ’T is folly to be wise", Thomas Gray, Eton College, Stanza 10.
“Safe, sane and consensual — what do those words really mean?
Assimilation, that's what.”
Source: "Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny", p. 12
“Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.”
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
“There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.”
E 59
Variant translation: There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible...
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)
Context: There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth … into a liar — that I call an achievement.
"Compromise, Hell!" Orion magazine (November/December 2004) http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/147/.
Context: We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
