there are so many wonderful quotes from great philosophers, and from ordinary people. How do I decide what to post? The quote that speaks to me at the time, is the one that is posted. If one of these quotes speaks to you and you choose to write about it, I would be happy to reblog it here. Thank you, Léa
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“The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.” – Bertrand Russell
My endeavor is merely to scatter the crumbs and hopefully ignite someone to take up the following quote, suck out the marrow and find where it might lead their thought processes. If they chose to share it here, it would be a pleasure to reblog the effort. Thank you, Léa
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“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the lives of others.” – Simone de Beauvoir
There is never a bad time to make positive changes. However, I thought the beginning of the month was an excellent time to approach the subject of personal responsibility. I may not be the one out there spewing lies, nor assaulting others to “defend” my lies or those of another. However, silence is to conspire against the truth. I hold myself accountable for any failings to speak out, and any failure to enlighten those who may not know but are willing to listen. Contributions of your efforts to help educate those who are open-minded will be reblogged. Thank you, Léa
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“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” – Voltaire
Please, open your heart and feel each word.
“When I was five years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote down “happy.”They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – Langston Hughes
LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN
Langston Hughes – 1902 – 1967
Let america be america again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa\s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-the land where every man is free
The land that’s mine- the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We the people must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!
*******
Bisous,
Léa
A faith like Al Capone’s: a gun and a smile will get you farther than just a smile. A vision like Charlie Manson’s: love is all you need, “love” spelled “K-N-I-F-E.” A discipline like John Gotti’s: well-dressed, cracking jokes and heads, bragging and daring you to try it. A truth like George Armstrong Custer’s: if you charge […]
“Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”
After after getting to know an old tramp back in the nineteen seventies, I decided to write the following story…
~~~
Dhobi
I walked into the autopsy room at the beginning of the day to find a body awaiting my undivided attention which had been found in the woods above the neighbouring village where I grew up. I was equally shocked and saddened. It was my childhood friend Dhobi.
Back then most of the kids in our village were merciless towards him, throwing stones, shouting obscenities. None of them knew the simple gentle man hidden beneath the grime the way I did.
I was the only kid who didn’t pick on him. There was something very special about this loner who had shunned society for the woods. Never once did I wonder why he lived the way he did, nor did he ever offer an explanation. Dhobi was a man…
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Happy Monday! My top ten list of articles for writers is hot off the press. This week I chose general writing subjects, not so much focusing on scifi or fantasy genre as I usually do. Sometimes it is good to break things up. I hope you enjoy this week’s selection.
The Half-Wild Muse: On Writers and Their Cats
Another Person’s Words: Poetry Is Always the Speaker
How Stanley Kubrick Staged the Moon Landing
This Tiny Traveling Bookstore Wanders the French Countryside
‘Close’ Proximity, ‘End’ Result, and More Redundant Words to Delete From Your Writing
The world’s largest (1) oil-exporters: President Putin and the Saudi royal family, in close cooperation with US oil executives and the OPEC regimes, are fighting with their backs against the wall. The green shift (2) has begun, and oil prices will never return to the high altitudes (3). After a possible short-lived upturn the next two or three years, the price…
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I see a saucer of milk
skimming the treetops,
I see over a dozen twin droplets
shaken from a pair of whiskers
and my heart
stops.
I see the icicle stars
diamanté paw prints
padding across the whole sky,
I see a half-smile
soon to be a grin
and I swear I see the moon slumping
heaving a contented sigh.
I see with my heart
as well as my eyes,
maybe that’s why
tonight of all nights
the earth seems so very
alive,
if only my tongue were long enough
to drink every last sight up,
and if only I were tall enough
to reach out and give the world
a hug.
REAL BEAUTY…
from google
the truest beauty …
On that rainy windswept night, when we took shelter under a leaking bus stop,
shivering as invisibles, scratched out of this world’s pitiless sight.
We spoke at length, as the buses passed us by,
we bared our souls to each other, as strangers often do,
laughing about how we roamed these avenues without a clue.
We spoke of excruciating truths, of life’s random cruelty, of our hopes and of our dreams, of our small joys and of our fears,
as we stood under that leaking bus stop, the rain streaking down cheeks that were salty with tears.
I barely saw you, and you could hardly see me, in the rain and in the fog,
as we laughed and cried together, sharing feelings of being swamped in life’s quicksand tugging bog.
We spoke so much that rainy night, we shared what we could not share…
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