You gotta love it

When you leave New York,
you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is.
Clean is not enough.

        Fran Lebowitz, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Common weal

To the ignorant and bawling fanatics who stun you with their pother about liberty, political or civil liberty seems to be the principal end for which government ought to exist. But the final cause or purpose for which government ought to exist, is the furtherance of the common weal to the greatest possible extent.

            John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined 

 

 

 

 

 

E Pluribus Unum

America is woven of many strands;
I would recognize them and let it so remain.
It's "winner take nothing" that is the great truth
of our country or of any country.
Life is to be lived, not controlled;
and humanity is won by continuing to play
in face of certain defeat.
Our fate is to become one, and yet many—
This is not prophecy, but description.

            Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man

 

 

 

 

Hold fast to the dream

The republic is a dream
Nothing happens unless first a dream.

    Carl Sandburg, Washington Monument by Night, stanza 4

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The High-School Lawn

Gray prinked with rose,
White tipped with blue,
Shoes with gay hose,
Sleeves of chrome hue;
Fluffed frills of white,
Dark bordered light;
Such shimmerings through
Trees of emerald green are eyed
This afternoon, from the road outside.

They whirl around:
Many laughters run
With a cascade's sound;
Then a mere one.

A bell: they flee:
Silence then: —
So it will be
Some day again
With them, — with me. 

                Thomas Hardy

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quest

We spend our life, it's ours,
trying to bring together in the same instant
a ray of sunshine and a free bench... 

            Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your own village

That you need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it.
Your own village means that you're not alone,
that you know there's something of you
in the people and the plants and the soil,
that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you.

            Cesare Pavese, The Moon and the Bonfire