Generals Die In Bed Death Quotes

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding. Didn't Roman generals hire slaves to march beside them in a triumphant parade and remind them that they too would die? Even your narrator, one morning after what should have been a happy occasion, was found shivering at the end of the bed (spouse: "I really wish you weren't crying right now"). Don't little children, awakened one morning and told, "Now you're five!" - don't they wail at the universe's descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death - shouldn't we all wail to the stars?

I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream

what is the expression which the age demands? the age demands no expression whatever. we have seen photographs of bereaved asian mothers. we are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. there is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. do not even try. you will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. we have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. you are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. this should make you very quiet. speak the words, convey the data, step aside. everyone knows you are in pain. you cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. you have nothing to teach them. you are not more beautiful than they are. you are not wiser. do not shout at them. do not force a dry entry. that is bad sex. if you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. and remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. what is our need? to be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. the bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. they have also destroyed the stage. did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? there is no more stage. there are no more footlights. you are among the people. then be modest. speak the words, convey the data, step aside. be by yourself. be in your own room. do not put yourself on. do not act out words. never act out words. never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. if you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. if ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material. this is an interior landscape. it is inside. it is private. respect the privacy of the material. these pieces were written in silence. the courage of the play is to speak them. the discipline of the play is not to violate them. let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. be good whores. the poem is not a slogan. it cannot advertise you. it cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. you are students of discipline. do not act out the words. the words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition. the poem is nothing but information. it is the constitution of the inner country. if you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. you are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. think of the words as science, not as art. they are a report. you are speaking before a meeting of the explorers' club of the national geographic society. these people know all the risks of mountain climbing. they honour you by taking this for granted. if you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. if you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. it will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. it will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence. avoid the flourish. do not be afraid to be weak. do not be ashamed to be tired. you look good when you're tired. you look like you could go on forever. now come into my arms. you are the image of my beauty.

There is an art to navigating London during the Blitz. Certain guides are obvious: Bethnal Green and Balham Undergrounds are no-goes, as is most of Wapping, Silvertown and the Isle of Dogs. The further west you go, the more you can move around late at night in reasonable confidence of not being hit, but should you pass an area which you feel sure was a council estate when you last checked in the 1970s, that is usually a sign that you should steer clear. There are also three practical ways in which the Blitz impacts on the general functioning of life in the city. The first is mundane: streets blocked, services suspended, hospitals overwhelmed, firefighters exhausted, policemen belligerent and bread difficult to find. Queuing becomes a tedious essential, and if you are a young nun not in uniform, sooner or later you will find yourself in the line for your weekly portion of meat, to be eaten very slowly one mouthful at a time, while non-judgemental ladies quietly judge you Secondly there is the slow erosion-a rather more subtle but perhaps more potent assault on the spirit It begins perhaps subtly, the half-seen glance down a shattered street where the survivors of a night which killed their kin sit dull and numb on the crooked remnants of their bed. Perhaps it need not even be a human stimulus: perhaps the sight of a child's nightdress hanging off a chimney pot, after it was thrown up only to float straight back down from the blast, is enough to stir something in your soul that has no rare. Perhaps the mother who cannot find her daughter, or the evacuees' faces pressed up against the window of a passing train. It is a death of the soul by a thousand cuts, and the falling skies are merely the laughter of the executioner going about his business. And then, inevitably, there is the moment of shock It is the day your neighbour died because he went to fix a bicycle in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It is the desk which is no longer filled, or the fire that ate your place of work entirely so now you stand on the street and wonder, what shall I do? There are a lot of lies told about the Blitz spirit: legends are made of singing in the tunnels, of those who kept going for friends, family and Britain. It is far simpler than that People kept going because that was all that they could really do. Which is no less an achievement, in its way.

I am a puny part of the great whole. Yes; but all animals condemned to live, All sentient things, born by the same stern law, Suffer like me, and like me also die. The vulture fastens on his timid prey, And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs: All’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while An eagle tears the vulture into shreds; The eagle is transfixed by shafts of man; The man, prone in the dust of battlefields, Mingling his blood with dying fellow men, Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds. Thus the whole world in every member groans, All born for torment and for mutual death. And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say The ills of each make up the good of all! What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice, Mortal and pitiful ye cry, “All’s well,” The universe belies you, and your heart Refutes a hundred times your mind’s conceit. . . . What is the verdict of the vastest mind? Silence: the book of fate is closed to us. Man is a stranger to his own research; He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes. Tormented atoms in a bed of mud, Devoured by death, a mockery of fate; But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes, Guided by thoughts, have measured the faint stars. Our being mingles with the infinite; Ourselves we never see, or come to know. This world, this theatre of pride and wrong, Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness. . . . Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone, The sunny ways of pleasure’s general rule; The times have changed, and, taught by growing age, And sharing of the frailty of mankind, Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom, I can but suffer, and will not repine.50

Consider how the greatest things ever done on earth have been done by little and little—little agents, little persons, and little things. How was the wall restored around Jerusalem? By each man, whether his house was an old palace or the rudest cabin, building the breach before his own door. How was the soil of the New World redeemed from gloomy forests? By each sturdy emigrant cultivating the patch round his own log cabin. How have the greatest battles been won? Not by the generals who got their breasts blazoned with stars, and their brows crowned with honours; but by the rank and file—every man holding his own post, and ready to die on the battle-field. They won the victory! It was achieved by the blood and courage of the many; and I say, if the world is ever to be conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble, and mighty; but by every man and woman, every member of Christ's body, being a working member; doing their own work; filling their own sphere; holding their own post; and saying to Jesus, ‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’ And, indeed, when all is done, I venture to say of the busiest man that, when he lies on a dying bed, and grim death stands over him, his won't be the pleasant reflection, ‘How much have I done?’ but rather the regretful thought, ‘How much have I left undone? how many more sinners might I have warned; how many more wretched might I have blessed; how many more naked might I have clothed; how many more poor might I have fed; how many in hell may be cursing my want of faithfulness; how few in heaven are blessing God for my Christian, kind fidelity!’ Ah, the best of us will be thankful to be taken to glory, not as profitable servants, but as sinners saved.

I must begin, my dearest, with the death of the Comte de Guiche; that is what is in everybody’s mind at the moment. The poor fellow died of sickness and general decline in the army of M. de Turenne. The news came on Tuesday morning. Père Bourdaloue announced it to Maréchal de Gramont, who had guessed it already, knowing his son’s parlous condition. He sent everybody away from his room. He was in his little apartment just outside the Capucines. When he was alone with the priest he fell on his neck saying that he guessed what he had to tell him, that it was a mortal blow which he accepted from the hand of God, that he had lost the only true object of his love and natural affection, that he had never had any real joy or violent pain except through his son, who had admirable qualities. He threw himself on to a bed in utter despair, but not weeping, for one doesn’t weep in that state. The priest himself was weeping, though so far he had said nothing, then he spoke to him of God, as you know he can speak.

I am a puny part of the great whole. Yes; but all animals condemned to live, All sentient things, born by the same stern law, Suffer like me, and like me also die. The vulture fastens on his timid prey, And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs: All’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while An eagle tears the vulture into shreds; The eagle is transfixed by shafts of man; The man, prone in the dust of battlefields, Mingling his blood with dying fellow men, Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds. Thus the whole world in every member groans, All born for torment and for mutual death. And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say The ills of each make up the good of all! What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice, Mortal and pitiful ye cry, “All’s well,” The universe belies you, and your heart Refutes a hundred times your mind’s conceit. . . . What is the verdict of the vastest mind? Silence: the book of fate is closed to us. Man is a stranger to his own research; He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes. Tormented atoms in a bed of mud, Devoured by death, a mockery of fate; But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes, Guided by thoughts, have measured the faint stars. Our being mingles with the infinite; Ourselves we never see, or come to know. This world, this theatre of pride and wrong, Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness. . . . Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone, The sunny ways of pleasure’s general rule; The times have changed, and, taught by growing age, And sharing of the frailty of mankind, Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom, I can but suffer, and will not repine.