..it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery
images..
- Frank O'Hara in a poem called, Ave Maria
Mothers of America...but I liked the meaning of the above lines, taken out of the context of the poem.
let your kids go to the movies
I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems from the mechanization and dehumanization of our lives - the disastrous by-product of the scientific and technical mentality. Nostra culpa. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits. - Albert Einstein
He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
My pacificism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of people is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.
There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternative service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.
It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human material"
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Nationalism, on my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression.
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
The punishment we suffer, if we refuse to take an interest in matters of government, is to live under the government of worse men. - Plato
So Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. – Edward Morgan ForsterFreedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity; freedom from the fear of doing something that would help someone else more than it does me; freedom from the kind of pride that makes me feel I am better than my brother. - Duke Ellington quoting the four freedoms by which his composing colleague Billy Strayhorn had lived - from notes on CD “1969 All-Star White House Tribute to Duke Ellington, Blue Note, c 2002 Capital Records Inc. (April 29, 1969 70th birthday party for Duke Ellington at the White House – celebrations at which Nixon gave him the Medal of Freedom.)
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wetwith a decent happiness
the other nightRead more poems by Creeley and by Myles and if further interested, read these interviews with Creeley and Myles.
under the eaves
in a rain at 4 o'clock
U woke up it was
so sexy;
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
– Mary Oliver
Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was
- Actress Sandra Dee told The Newark Evening News, 1967.
If you're always guided by other people's thoughts, whats the point of having our own - Helen Hunt's character in the movie, The Good Woman, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan
