The good social worker doesn't go on mechanically helping people out of a ditch. Pretty soon, she/he begins to find out what ought to be done to get rid of the ditch.
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A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. Spare some change? mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his baseball cap. I have nothing to give you, said the stranger. Then he added, What's that you are sitting on? Nothing, replied the beggar, Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember. Ever look inside? asked the stranger. What's the point? There's nothing in there. Have a look inside, insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw the box was filled with gold.
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don't make love till almost obliged.
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Civilization rests on a set of promises; if the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on the promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes.
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