We held hands on the last night on earth. Our mouths filled with dust, we kissed in the fields and under trees, screaming like dogs, bleeding dark into the leaves. It was empty on the edge of town but we knew everyone floated along the bottom of the river. So we walked through the waste where the road curved into the sea and the shattered seasons lay, and the bitter smell of burning was on you like a disease.In our cancer of passion you said, 'Death is a midnight runner.' The sky had come crashing down like the news of an intimate suicide. We picked up the shards and formed them into shapes of stars that wore like an antique wedding dress. The echoes of the past broke the hearts of the unborn as the ferris wheel silently slowed to a stop. The few insects skidded away in hopes of a better pastime. I kissed you at the apexof the maelstrom and asked if you would accompany me ina quick fall, but you made me realize that my ticket wasn't good for two. I rode alone. You said,'The cinders are falling like snow.' There is poetry in despair, and we sang with unrivaled beauty, bitter elegies of savagery and eloquence.Of blue and grey. Strange, we ran down desperate streets and carvedour names in the flesh of the city. The sun has stagnated somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon and the darkness is a mystery of curves and line.Still, we lay under the emptiness and drifted slowly outward,and somewhere in the wilderness we foundsalvation scratched into the earth like a message. the untitled poem--afi
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The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
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How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers' names.
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Nor youth, nor strength, nor wisdom spring again, Nor habitations long their names retain, But in oblivion to the final day remain.
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He said true things, but called them by wrong names.
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In our world of big names, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knowness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.
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I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
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Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
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I think of those who were truly great. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
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Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
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As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on. She went closer. She peered at the stone. There were names on it. Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling, over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards, over furlongs of stone. She moved through the space beneath the arch where the man was sweeping. She found the other pillas identically marked, their faces obliterated on all sides by the names that were carved on them. 'Who are these, these ...?; She gestured with her hand.' 'These?' The man with the brush sounded surprised. 'The lost.' 'Men who died in battle?' 'No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in cemetries.' 'These are just the ... unfound?' She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes. When she could speak again, she said, 'from the whole war?' The man shook his head. 'Just these fields.' He gestured with his arm. Elizabeth went and sat on the steps on the other side of the monument. Beneath her was a formal garden with some rows of white headstones, each with a tended plant or flower at its base, each cleaned and beautiful in the weak winter sunlight. 'Nobody told me.' She ran her fingers with their red-painted nails back through her thick dark hair. 'My God, nobody told me.
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There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.
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Baudelaire compared the great names in art to lighthouses posted along the track of historic time. The simile, as he used it, seizes the imagi...
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And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.
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Whats the deal with toilet paper these days? Its no longer called 'toilet paper'. There are little sissy names for it such as: 'bathroom tissue', and many others. [...]
[Pets] never complain. They never bite you, or pee on you because you don't call them 'k9s', or 'Felines'. They just go about their business, like humping your leg, or licking each others genitals.
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Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams. They have different names but all contain water. Religions have different names, but all contain truth.
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All that the hand of man can uprear, is either overturned by the hand of man, or at length by standing and continuing consumed: as if there were a secret opposition in Fate (the unevitable decree of the Eternal) to control our industry, and countercheck all our devices and proposing. Possessions are not enduring, children lose their names. . . .
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not bad... it looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults, even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may have perhaps so
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How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.
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They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
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Men of vision. Oh, I love the fine names men give each other to hide their greed and lust for adventure.
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Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies.
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Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
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May the road be free for the journey, May it lead where it promised it would, May the stars that gave ancient bearings Be seen, still be understood May every aircraft fly safely, May every traveler be found, May sailors in crossing the ocean Not hear the cried of the drowned May gardens be wild, like jungles, May nature never be tamed, May dangers create of us heroes, May fears always have names, May the mountains stand to remind us, Of what it mean to be young May we be outlived by our daughters, May we be outlived by our sons May the bombs rust away in the bunkers, And the doomsday clock not be rewound May the solitary scientists, working Remember the holes in the ground May the knife remain in the holder, May the bullet stay in the gun, May those who live in the shadows Be seen by those in the sun
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Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.
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I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.
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Perhaps you say, Why are the wicked joyous? Why do they live in luxury? Why do they not toil with me? It is because they who have not put down their names to strive for the crown are not bound to undergo the labors of the contest. They who have not gone down into the race-course do not annoint themselves with oil nor get covered with dust. For those whom glory awaits trouble is at hand. The perfumed spectators are wont to look on, not to join in the struggle, nor to endure the sun, the heat, the dust, and the showers ...
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People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can't pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as exotic but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.
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