How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose; on him the balmy dews Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.
Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes.
Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deep, Now tell me if that any is. For gift or grace, surpassing this-- "He giveth His beloved sleep."
Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. There is only one thing, which somebody once put into my head, that I dislike in sleep; it is, that it resembles death; there is very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep.
If you're not using your smile, you're like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook.
Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his own country;--seldom since that day Has Spain had heroes.
The smile of her I love is like the dawn Whose touch makes Menmon sing: O see where wide the golden sunlight flows-- The barren desert blossoms as the rose!
And she hath smiles to earth unknown-- Smiles that with motion of their own Do spread, and sink, and rise.
A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one-- And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all.
But now being lifted into high society, And having pick'd up several odds and ends Of free thoughts in his travels for variety, He deem'd, being in a lone isle, among friends, That without any danger of a riot, he Might for long lying make himself amends; And singing as he sung in his warm youth, Agree to a short armistice with truth.
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world.
We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.
One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring upon them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves- and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.
The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work- of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence 'unnatural,' but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.
The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.
The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, "culture." It's an old ploy of the bourgeoisie. They keep a standing "art" to defend their collapsing culture.
The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being.