There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope – I hope he didn’t suffer – and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is.
Fear the time when the bombs stopped falling while the bombers live – for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live – for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken.
There wasn’t any limit, no boundary at all, to the future. And it would be so a man wouldn’t have room to store his happiness.
We got to get thinkin’ about doin’ stuff that means somepin.
An’ I got to thinkin’, on’y it wasn’t thinkin’, it was deeper down than thinkin’.
Against the descending sun the battlements were dark and clean-lined, while to the east, where the uninhibited light poured slantwise, the strange landscape shouted with color.
You got to think about that day, an’ then the nex’ day. Jus’ take ever’ day.
In their millions the frog songs seemed to have a beat and a cadence, and perhaps it is the ears’ function to do this just as it is the eyes’ business to make stars twinkle.
He was proud of her wild, exploring mind.
Even if teen-age children aren’t making a sound, it’s quieter when they’re gone. They put a boiling in the air around them. As they left, the whole house seemed to sigh and settle. No wonder poltergeists infest only houses with adolescent children. The.
It ain’t kin we? It’s will we?
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much.
I never fixed no car in my life ‘thout cuttin’ myself. Now it’s done I don’t have to worry no more.
A cantankerous, complaining, mischievous, laughing face. He fought and argued, told dirty stories. He was as lecherous as always. Vicious and cruel and impatient, like a frantic child, and the whole structure overlaid with amusement. He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.
Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved.
It is snowing again. Confound it, will the winter never be over? I crave to have the solid ground under my feet. You cannot understand that craving if you have never lived in a country where every step was unstable. It is very tiresome and tiring to walk and have the ground give way under you at every step.
Look out for luck. You can’t trus’ luck.
Finding this potential in my own mind, I can suspect it in others, but I will never know, for no one ever tells.
Jus’ live the day. Don’ worry yaself.
The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling.