β
Come to think of it, an Aes Sedai would probably follow a man off a cliff, too, if only to explain to him - in detail - all the things he was doing incorrectly in the way he went about killing himself.
β
β
Robert Jordan (A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time, #14))
β
Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
β
β
A.E. Housman (Last Poems)
β
There was a wild light in his eyes. "Bring your lightnings, Aes Sedai. I will dance with them.
β
β
Robert Jordan (The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time, #2))
β
All men are ignorant, Aes Sedai. The topics of our ignorance may change, but the nature of the world is that no man may know everything.
β
β
Robert Jordan (A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time, #14))
β
Give me your trust, said the Aes Sedai.
On my shoulders I support the sky.
Trust me to know and to do what is best,
And I will take care of the rest.
But trust is the color of a dark seed growing.
Trust is the color of a heart's blood flowing.
Trust is the color of a soul's last breath.
Trust is the color of death.
Give me your trust said the queen on her throne,
for I must bear the burden alone.
Trust me to lead and to judge and to rule, and no man will think you a fool.
But trust is the sound of the grave-dog's bark.
Trust is the sound of betrayal in the dark.
Trust is the sound of a soul's last breath.
Trust is the sound of death.
β
β
Robert Jordan (Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time, #6))
β
Give me a land of boughs in leaf
A land of trees that stand;
Where trees are fallen there is grief;
I love no leafless land.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
All utopias are dystopias. The term "dystopia" was coined by fools that believed a "utopia" can be functional.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" begins with "life", and "life" begins at conception.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
I'd throw the thought away.
To put the world between us
We parted stiff and dry:
'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.'
'Fare well, I will,' said I.
If e'er, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,
Halt by the headstone shading
The heart you have not stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a knife like other knives,
That cost me eighteen pence.
I need but stick it in my heart
And down will come the sky,
And earth's foundations will depart
And all you folk will die.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book."
(Introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College, London, 3 October 1892)
β
β
A.E. Housman (Selected Prose)
β
Civil Wars happen when the victimized are armed. Genocide happens when they are not.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
I to my perils
Of cheat and charmer
Came clad in armour
By stars benign.
Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.
The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
June suns, you cannot store them
To warm the winter's cold,
The lad that hopes for heaven
Shall fill his mouth with mould.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here I am in hell.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.
To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.
Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
All knots that lovers tie
Are tied to sever.
Here shall your sweetheart lie,
Untrue for ever.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
Bound by the Oath against lying, Aes Sedai [carry] the half-truth, the quarter-truth and the implication to arts.
β
β
Robert Jordan (Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time, #6))
β
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are fluttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack
And leave your friends and go.
O never fear, lads, naughtβs to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
Thereβs nothing but the night.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Those clouds above formed a pattern that looked familiar. Black on white, white on black.
It's the symbol, she realized with a start. The ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai.
Under this sign...shall he conquer.
β
β
Robert Jordan (A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time, #14))
β
Could man be drunk for ever
Β Β Β With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
Β Β Β And lief lie down of nights.
But men at whiles are sober
Β Β Β And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Β Β Β Their hands upon their hearts.
β
β
A.E. Housman (The Collected Poems)
β
Lie you easy, dream you light,
And sleep you fast for aye;
And luckier may you find the night
Than ever you found the day.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
If I believe the same things today I did yesterday I've learned nothing.
β
β
A.E. van Vogt
β
Browns seek knowledge, Blues meddle in causes, and Whites consider the questions of truth with implacable logic. We all do some of it all, of course. But to be Green means to stand ready. In the Trolloc Wars, we were often called the Battle Ajah. All Aes Sedai helped where and when they could, but the Green Ajah alone was always with the armies, in almost every battle. We were the counter to the dreadlords. The Battle Ajah. And now we stand ready, for the Trollocs to come south again, for Tarmon Gai'don. the Last Battle. We will be there. That is what it means to be Green. -Alanna
β
β
Robert Jordan
β
He was a soldier. He was a shepherd. He was a beggar, and a king. He was a farmer, gleeman, sailor, carpenter. He was born, lived, and died Aiel. He died mad, he died rotting, he died of sickness, accident, age. He was executed, and multitudes cheered his death. He proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn and flung his banner across the sky; he ran from the Power and hid; he lived and died never knowing. He held off the madness and the sickness for years; he succumbed between two winters. Sometimes Moiraine came and took him away from the Two Rivers, alone or with those of his friends who had survived Winternight; sometimes she did not. Sometimes other Aes Sedai came for him. Sometimes Red Ajah. Egwene married him; Egwene, stern-faced in stole of Amyrlin Seat, led Aes Sedai who gentled him; Egwene, with tears in her eyes, plunged a dagger into his heart, and he thanked her as he died. He loved other women, married other women. Elayne, and Min, and a fair-haired farmer's daughter met on the road to Caemlyn, and women he had never seen before he lived those lives. A hundred lives. More. So many he could not count them. And at the end of every life, as he lay dying, as he drew his final breath, a voice whispered in his ear. I have won again, Lews Therin. Flicker.
β
β
Robert Jordan (The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time, #2))
β
We do not learn for the benefit of anyone, we learn to unlearn ignorance.
β
β
Michael Bassey Johnson
β
Marian exhaled. 'Because God made me a woman is no reason to be such a woman as men wish to make me.
β
β
A.E. Chandler, The Scarlet Forest: A Tale of Robin Hood
β
The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.
β
β
A.E. van Vogt
β
The spoken word is ephemeral. The written word, eternal. A symphony, timeless.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
The Amyrlin Seat has fallen," a nearby Aes Sedai cried amid the crystallized Sharans. "The Amyrlin Seat has fallen!
β
β
Robert Jordan (A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time, #14))
β
When I Was One-And-Twenty
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
βGive crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.β
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
βThe heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
βTis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.β
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, βtis true, βtis true.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
5.Buggre Alle this for a Larke I amme sick to mye Hart of typefetinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges now more that a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half and oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Suneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the lielong dale inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe *AE@;I*
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
β
Stone, steel, dominions pass,
Faith too, no wonder;
So leave alone the grass
That I am under.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
There was nothing conservative about Adolf Hitler. Hitler was an artist and a revolutionary at heart. He wanted to completely upend and remake German society.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
Jodoh itu adalah amanah. Jika kita sudah siap sedia untk menerima amanah itu, Allah akan mengirimkan jodoh itu kepada
kita :')
β
β
A.E.
β
You drink way too much coffee, Day. I mean all day everyββ
βAnd you fuck too much. I mean all day every day.β Day cut God off. βDo I tell you to stop? No. Instead I feed your addiction. Canβt you provide me the same courtesy?
β
β
A.E. Via (Nothing Special (Nothing Special #1))
β
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, and we were young.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
Hero! He was no hero! What did a hero get? An Aes Sedai patting you on the head before she sent you out like a hound to do it again. A noblewoman condescending to favor you with a kiss, or laying a flower on your grave.
β
β
Robert Jordan (The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time, #5))
β
To be far from the madding crowd is to be mad indeed.
β
β
A.E. Coppard (Dusky Ruth and Other Stories)
β
The sadist desires to command and control. The masochist desires to be freed from the burdens of liberty. That is Socialism.
β
β
A.E. Samaan (From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848)
β
There what is?β I purse my lips, trying not to smile. βThe moment you steal my heart,
β
β
A.E. Murphy (Broken (Broken, #1))
β
Footprints are an amazing thing, even the ones you canβt see. They make you wonder whoβs walked right where youβre walking. Whoβs travelled this same path? What were their concerns? Who did they love? Are they still alive?
β
β
A.E. Murphy (Broken (Broken, #1))
β
With Rue My Heart Is Laden
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
Her strong enchantments failing,
Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck,
The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,
`O young man, O my slayer
To-morrow you shall die.'
O Queen of air and darkness
I think 'tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
But you shall die to-day.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.
β
β
George William Russell (Collected Poems by A.E.)
β
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
It has been eaten by a bear."
"Infant Innocence
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
People are people, low or high.
β
β
Robert Jordan (Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time, #6))
β
Wanderers eastward, wanderers west,
Know you why you cannot rest?
'Tis that every mother's son
Travails with a skeleton.
Lie down in the bed of dust;
Bear the fruit that bear you must;
Bring the eternal seed to light,
And morn is all the same as night.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
Day leveled Ronowski with a stern glare. βRonowski, you are gay, man. Youβre tightly closeted. But you are indeed gay, ultra-gay. Youβre fuckinβ Marvin Gay. You crash landed on Earth when your gay planet exploded.β Day moved away from God and stood in front of an openmouthed Ronowski. βCome out of the closet already. Itβs so bright and wonderful out here. Dude, Iβve seen Brokeback Mountain too, donβt believe that bullshit. No one cares who you fuckβ¦ya knowβ¦like you tell me every. Single. Day. Of. My. Life,β Day said exaggeratedly.
β
β
A.E. Via (Nothing Special)
β
To stand up straight and tread the turning mill,
To lie flat and know nothing and be still,
Are the two trades of man; and which is worse
I know not, but I know that both are ill.
β
β
A.E. Housman (More Poems)
β
Communism is what happens when Socialists realize that they want complete control over every aspect of human life.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always. ("The Higgler")
β
β
A.E. Coppard (Dusky Ruth and Other Stories)
β
The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.
Oh, grant me the ease that is granted so free,
The birthright of multitudes, give it to me,
That relish their victuals and rest on their bed
With flint in the bosom and guts in the head.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
So just talking would be niceβ¦would you like to come over to my place tonight for a glass of wine?β
βNot even if Jesus was pouring it,β Day responded quickly."
--Johnson-the-Stalker to Day
β
β
A.E. Via (Nothing Special (Nothing Special #1))
β
You smile upon your friend to-day,
To-day his ills are over;
You hearken to the lover's say,
And happy is the lover.
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never:
I shall have lived a little while
Before I die for ever.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
The desire to engineer humanity is a sign of a mind warped by megalomania and lust for power.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
Your wit never ceases to underwhelm me.
β
β
A. Kirk (Midnight Poison (The Paranormal Poisons Saga, #1))
β
Way I see it, depression is as bad as cancer. You fight it until you live or die and thereβs always the chance itβll come back.
β
β
A.E. Murphy (Stepdork)
β
Nowhere in the Bill of Rights are the words "unless inconvenient" to be found.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.
I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
On a day of fire and blood, a tattered banner waved above Dumaiβs Wells, bearing the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai.
On a day of fire and blood and the One Power, as prophecy had suggested, the unstained tower, broken, bent knee to the forgotten sign.
The first nine Aes Sedai swore fealty to the Dragon Reborn, and the world was changed forever.
β
β
Robert Jordan (Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time, #6))
β
Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.
β
β
A.E. Housman (The Collected Poems)
β
What would you do if you were to wake up tomorrow and see that this was all a dream? Would you do it all over again?
β
β
A.E. Murphy (Connected (Broken, #2))
β
I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;
- from Poem XLI
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Regulated" rights are not rights. They are niceties and platitudes intended to keep the populace thinking their individual autonomy is respected by their government.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
The old blood is indeed still strong in the Two Rivers.
β
β
Robert Jordan (The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, #1))
β
Guns are a necessary tool designed to help your people avoid a repeat of history.
β
β
A.E. Samaan
β
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Day had gotten a little nervous during one session when the doctor asked God how he would handle someone hurting Day now and his lover responded by jerking one side of his leather coat open and pulling his long blade from its sheathe.
βEasy, Iβd cut their fucking arm off and beat the shit out of them with it,β heβd said.
But Day quickly started laughing and told the concerned doctor that his partner was just playing.
After popping God hard in his stomach, God agreed and said he was indeed joking. When the doctor went back to writing on her legal pad, God mouthed to him, βNo Iβm not.
β
β
A.E. Via (Nothing Special)
β
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
ββββHe would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,
ββββAnd went with half my life about my ways.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Robert again faced the sky. βThat is a childrenβs dream, Marian. We are old enough that we must think of realities.β
βThe reality is that I have no place, excepting I carve out one alone.
β
β
A.E. Chandler (The Scarlet Forest: A Tale of Robin Hood)
β
He asked with a stiff smile 'What is love?'
For me,' said Orianda, fumbling for a definition, 'for me it is a compound of anticipation and gratitude. When either of these two ingredients is absent love is dead.
β
β
A.E. Coppard (Dusky Ruth and Other Stories)
β
I think I screamed. She certainly did. I started to walk away, she followed. We continued to scream at each other. We were in the middle of a busy square. People stopped to look at us. A lot of people. I wonder now what they thought. That Jin-Ae was my wife? My lover? Surely not an ambitious employee haranguing her boss!
β
β
Oliver Dowson
β
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the color of his hair.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
If it chance your eye offends you,
Pluck it out lad, and be sound:
'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,
And many a balsam grows on ground.
And if your hand or foot offend you,
Cut it off, lad, and be whole;
But play the man, stand up and end you,
When your sickness is your soul.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.
The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight through reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
I sought them far and found them,
The sure, the straight, the brave,
The hearts I lost my own to,
The souls I could not save
They braced their belts about them,
They crossed in ships the sea,
They sought and found six feet of ground,
And there they died for me.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Day had gotten a little nervous during one session when the doctor asked God how he would handle someone hurting Day now and his lover responded by jerking his leather coat open and pulling his long blade from its sheathe.
"Easy, I'd cut their fucking arm off and beat the shit out of them with it," he'd said.
β
β
A.E. Via (Nothing Special)
β
Hy gododin catann hue
Hud a lledrith mal wyddan
Gaunce ae bellawn wen cabri
Varigal don Fincayra
Dravia, dravia Fincayra
(Talking trees and walking stones,
Giants are the island's bones.
While this land our dance still knows,
Varigal crowns Fincayra.
Live long, live long Fincayra.
β
β
T.A. Barron
β
Oh fair enough are sky and plain,
But I know fairer far:
Those are as beautiful again
That in the water are;
The pools and rivers wash so clean
The trees and clouds and air,
The like on earth was never seen,
And oh that I were there.
These are the thoughts I often think
As I stand gazing down
In act upon the cressy brink
To strip and dive and drown;
But in the golden-sanded brooks
And azure meres I spy
A silly lad that longs and looks
And wishes he were I.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must:
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.
Souls undone, undoing others,-
Long time since the tale began.
You would not live to wrong your brothers:
Oh lad, you died as fits a man.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
The poor wretch, she had given up so much and could yet smile at her trouble. He himself had never surrendered to anything in life - that was what life demanded of you - surrender. For reward it gave you love, this swarthy, skin-deep love that exacted remorseless penalties.
β
β
A.E. Coppard (Dusky Ruth and Other Stories)
β
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
β
β
A.E. Housman
β
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their veins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
β
β
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
β
Loveliest of Trees
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
β
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A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
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Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
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Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
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A modern soldier returning from combat---or a survivor of Sarajevo---goes from the kind of close-knit group that humans evolved for, back into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families ae isolated from wider communities, and personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good. Even if he or she is part of a family, that is not the same as belonging to a group that shares resources and experiences almost everything collectively. Whatever the technological advances of modern society---and they're nearly miraculous---the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.
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Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
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If truth in hearts that perish
Could move the powers on high,
I think the love I bear you
Should make you not to die.
Sure, sure, if steadfast meaning,
If single thought could save,
The world might end to-morrow,
You should not see the grave.
This long and sure-set liking,
This boundless will to please,
-Oh, you should live for ever
If there were help in these.
But now, since all is idle,
To this lost heart be kind,
Ere to a town you journey
Where friends are ill to find.
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A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
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Along the field as we came by
A year ago, my love and I,
The aspen over stile and stone
Was talking to itself alone.
'Oh who are these that kiss and pass?
A country lover and his lass;
Two lovers looking to be wed;
And time shall put them both to bed,
But she shall lie with earth above,
And he beside another love.'
And sure enough beneath the tree
There walks another love with me,
And overhead the aspen heaves
Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;
And I spell nothing in their stir,
But now perhaps they speak to her,
And plain for her to understand
They talk about a time at hand
When I shall sleep with clover clad,
And she beside another lad.
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A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
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The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girlβs.
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A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
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The Laws Of God, The Laws Of Man
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Now I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of manβs bedevilment and Godβs?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong,
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn or Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
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A.E. Housman (Last Poems)
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Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?
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A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)