I didn't know the bible said that....
Well shit, that saved me a lot of effort.
Well shit, that saved me a lot of effort.
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Literary Quotes (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Seven
- Start date
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
-from Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain.
-from Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W.H. Auden
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W.H. Auden
THE MARRIAGE
When he perceived how the mist of time
extinguished the sparks in his wife's eyes,
enervated her cheeks, cleaved her forehead,
he turned himself away, devoured with regret.
He sweared and pulled his beard.
He stared at her, but couldn't desire anymore.
He saw the greatest sin change into devil's duty,
and how she looked up at him as a dying horse.
But she didn't die, although his infernal mouth
sucked the narrow out of her bones, that still went on carrying her.
She didn't dare to speak anymore, to ask or to complaint,
she shivered where she stood, but lived on and kept healthy.
He thought: I'll beat her to death and put the house on fire.
I have to wash the mould of my stiff feet,
and ran through fire and water
to another love in another country.
But beating her to death, he didn't do
Because in between dream and deed,
there are laws, and practical objections;
but also melancholy, that none can explain,
and comes at eve when people go to sleep.
So years went by: the children grew up,
and saw how the man who was their father,
was sitting by the fire, petrified and silent,
with a dangerous and forgotten look in his eyes.
Willem Elsschot (translation from Dutch, can't give a better one)
When he perceived how the mist of time
extinguished the sparks in his wife's eyes,
enervated her cheeks, cleaved her forehead,
he turned himself away, devoured with regret.
He sweared and pulled his beard.
He stared at her, but couldn't desire anymore.
He saw the greatest sin change into devil's duty,
and how she looked up at him as a dying horse.
But she didn't die, although his infernal mouth
sucked the narrow out of her bones, that still went on carrying her.
She didn't dare to speak anymore, to ask or to complaint,
she shivered where she stood, but lived on and kept healthy.
He thought: I'll beat her to death and put the house on fire.
I have to wash the mould of my stiff feet,
and ran through fire and water
to another love in another country.
But beating her to death, he didn't do
Because in between dream and deed,
there are laws, and practical objections;
but also melancholy, that none can explain,
and comes at eve when people go to sleep.
So years went by: the children grew up,
and saw how the man who was their father,
was sitting by the fire, petrified and silent,
with a dangerous and forgotten look in his eyes.
Willem Elsschot (translation from Dutch, can't give a better one)
