I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye.... But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes.... Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro.
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The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, It is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
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Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
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Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back; a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
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The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since the Vietnam War.
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Alas, poor Yorick I knew him, Horatio a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now your gambols, your songs your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar Not one now, to mock your own grinning Quite chap-fallen Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.
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If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.
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A small rock holds back a great wave.
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Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
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These things are serious. We know that. If we don't know it, we should just reflect back a few weeks to Katrina. It came through here as a Category 1, and trust me, we don't want to see much more.
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Only one ship is seeking us a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake...
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They shoulda called me Little Cocaine, I was sniffing so much of the stuff! My nose got big enough to back a diesel truck in, unload it, and drive it right out again.
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Main Street optimism has backed down from the mountain top and is resting on a high plateau. The general view is that things have been going well for so long, they're bound to ease back a bit. Small-business owners aren't painting a doom-and-gloom scenario here. They just sense that the red-hot economy will cool by a degree or two.
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All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That, addressed as free-born, autonomous men and women of God-given dignity, they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy.
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2 John 1:8:
Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.
(NIV)
Look to yourselves (take care) that you may not lose (throw away or destroy) all that we and you have labored for, but that you may [persevere until you] win and receive back a perfect reward [in full].
(AMP)
Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.
(KJV)
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You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature.
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Yesterday we had the big sell-off and we tried to come back a little bit.
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'They should move 1st base back a foot to avoid all those close plays'
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