Extra
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
In the world where money talks, silence is horrifying.
Faults
They came to tell your faults to me, They named them over one by one; I laughed aloud when they were done, I knew them all so well before,â Oh, they were blind, too blind to see Your faults had made me love you more.
What Do I Care
What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, That my songs do not show me at all? For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, I am an answer, they are only a call. But what do I care, for love will be over so soon, Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by, For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent, It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.
Desert Pools
I love too much; I am a river Surging with spring that seeks the sea, I am too generous a giver, Love will not stoop to drink of me. His feet will turn to desert places Shadowless, reft of rain and dew, Where stars stare down with sharpened faces From heavens pitilessly blue. And there at midnight sick with faring He will stoop down in his desire To slake the thirst grown past all bearing In stagnant water keen as fire.
The Look
Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephonâs kiss was lost in jest, Robinâs lost in play, But the kiss in Colinâs eyes Haunts me night and day.
There Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white, Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.July 1918
They kill and die, for this "precious land", right? And they both litter, whole place is filled with, like, Cheeto bags..
[..]
If they're forced to work together on something that helps everybody.. they might just find out they're not so different after all.
[..]
Let's say solar power, Israel's all sun... so, you're welcome.
Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
We have more life than we know what to do with. We have life far beyond the point where it becomes a sick caricature of itself. We prolong life until it becomes a sickness, an abomination, a miserable and pathetic flight from death that saps out and mocks everything that made life desirable in the first place.
If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere.
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant
Yet another circumstance must be mentioned which proves favorable for the Nazis and their immensely powerful apparatus of oppression: the development of modern technology gives the rulers, as has long been insufficiently understood, an advantage over the ruled. The more effective the weapons become and the less you can protect yourself against them, the more the armed is superior to the unarmed. The Bastille could not be successfully stormed in the age of airplanes and tear gas. Rifles equipped with rifles have no chance against motorized police forces; it makes no sense to build barricades against a government that has tanks. And in the event of a revolution, it is not only weapons development that favors those in power, the state over the individual: modern technical development and the associated sophisticated organization work in the same direction. Traffic has led to the countries becoming small and easy to monitor. How many hiding places there were in a country a hundred years ago! At that time, every power hit natural barriers! Today there is no loophole and no hideout for the rebel anymore. Even the thoughts that are able to penetrate the walls have become "controllable" because they are tied to the mass distribution of news, to radio, film and the press. How long will it take before every house has its own microphone and every private word, like every telephone call today, can be heard? The ant state is at hand. It may not be a coincidence that states like Germany and Russia have elevated technology to the status of a religion. Conversely, this development of modern technology makes the preservation of freedom a human task that is more urgent than ever."Germany: Jekyll & Hyde (1939 - Deutschland von innen betrachtet)"
It is typical for the discouraging superficiality of contemporary thinking that the word "greatness", which describes a quantity and not a quality, is used as expression of recognition, like "beauty", "kindness", "wisdom" for example. What is great [or big] today, is nearly automatically seen as beautiful and good."Germany: Jekyll & Hyde (1939 - Deutschland von innen betrachtet)" (1940)
To live under constraint is a misfortune, but there is no constraint to live under constraint.
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes weâll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And weâll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends.
She had blue skin, and so did he. He kept it hid and so did she. They searched for blue their whole life through, then passed right by - and never knew.
A tiger catches a mouse with his whole strength. A tiger does not ignore or slight any small animal. The way he catches a mouse and the way he catches and devours a cow is the same. But usually, although you have many problems, you think they are minor, so you donât think it is necessary to exert yourself... So even though the problems you have in your everyday life are small, unless you know how to solve them you will have big difficulties."Not Always So"
We feel free to express ourselves because we are ready to fade into emptiness. When we are trying to be active and special and to accomplish something, we cannot express ourselves... So we have enjoyment, we are free."Not Always So"
My departure from the volumes of science was a sin far less serious than that which consisted in having neglected to cast his eyes on the book of life.
Oh, if only I could tell someone about my pain and misery! Even myself! Perhaps if I could tell myself about it in some new way it might have the power to shed some light on what had happened and on what would become of me.
Yes to the Earth
So radiant in certain mornings' light With its roses and its trees Is Earth, or with its grain and olives So suddenly it is radiant on the soul, Which stands then alone and forgetful Though just a moment earlier the soul Wept bloody tears or dwelt in bitterness; So radiant in certain mornings' light Is Earth, and in its silence so expressive This wondrous lump rolling in its skies; Beautiful, tragic in solitude, yet smiling That the soul, unasked, replies, "Yes" replies, "Yes" to the Earth To the indifferent earth, "Yes!" Even though next instant skies Should darken, roses too, Or the effort of life grow heavier still, The act of breathing even more heroic, "Yes" replies the battered soul to Earth, So radiant in the light of certain mornings, Beautiful above all things, and human hope."Yes to the Earth"
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
To will oneself free is also to will others free.
No one would take me just as I was, no one loved me; I shall love myself enough, I thought, to make up for this abandonment by everyone. Formerly, I had been quite satisfied with myself, but I had taken very little trouble to increase my self-knowledge; from now on, I would stand outside myself, watch over and observe myself; in my diary I had long conversations with myself. I was entering a world whose newness stunned me. I learned to distinguish between distress and melancholy, lack of emotion and serenity; I learned to recognize the hesitations of the heart, and its ecstasies, the splendor of great renunciations, and the subterranean murmurings of hope. I entered into exalted trances, as on those evenings when I used to gaze upon the sky full of moving clouds behind the distant blue of the hills; I was both the landscape and its beholder: I existed only through myself, and for myself⌠My path was clearly marked: I had to perfect, enrich and express myself in a work of art that would help others to live.
Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.
There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.
The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldnât speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic."Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter"
In fact, the sickness I was suffering from was that I had been driven out of the paradise of childhood and had not found my place in the world of adults. I had set myself up in the absolute in order to gaze down upon this world which was rejecting me; now, if I wanted to act, to write a book, to express myself, I would have to go back down there: but my contempt had annihilated it, and I could see nothing but emptiness. The fact is that I had not yet put my hand to the plow. Love, action, literary work: all I did was to roll these ideas round in my head; I was fighting in an abstract fashion against abstract possibilities, and I had come to the conclusion that reality was of the most pitiful insignificance. I was hoping to hold fast to something, and misled by the violence of this indefinite desire, I was confusing it with the desire for the infinite."Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter"
To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude."Prime of Life"
To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody."Prime of Life"
To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision."The Ethics of Ambiguity"
Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it."The Second Sex"
Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign."The Second Sex"
If so few female geniuses are found in history, it is because society denies them any means of expression."The Second Sex"
The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him... In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice."The Second Sex"
Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else."The Woman Destroyed"
Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything."The Woman Destroyed"
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.
In those who have suffered too many blows, in slaves for example, that place in the heart from which the infliction of evil evokes a cry of surprise may seem to be dead. But it is never quite dead; it is simply unable to cry out anymore.
I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws."Utopia" (1517)
We feel free because we lack the language to articulate our unfreedom.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments."War Is A Racket" (1935)
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone.
And I could weep at how mean people are and how they betray their fellow creatures, perhaps for the sake of personal advantage. It is enough to make a person lose heart sometimes. I often wish I lived on a Robinson Crusoe island.
I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.