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
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
The republic is a dream
Nothing happens unless first a dream.
Carl Sandburg, Washington Monument by Night, stanza 4
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
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
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
Once, when I was describing to a friend from Syracuse, New York,
a place on the plains that I love,
a ridge above a glacial moraine with a view of almost fifty miles,
she asked, "But what is there to see?"
The answer, of course, is nothing.
Land, sky, and the ever-changing light.
Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography