American Consequences - November 2018

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The lights must never go out, The music must always play... Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939

I don’t regret economic and educational advance; I just wonder how much we shall

have to pay for it, and in what coin. Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising, and then after all little by little

it grows nothing but vegetables. Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen

Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him... But nobody did come, because nobody does. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. The Book of Common Prayer The world... Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody Poor:

And Mercy no more could be, If all were as happy as we; William Blake, “The Human Abstract”

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. Fromwhat I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”

Where ignorant armies clash by night. MatthewArnold, “Dover Beach”

What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending. William Dean Howells, quoted by Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

The earth had no firmness, thewater no fluidity, therewas no brightness in the sky. Nothing had any lasting shape, but everything got in the way of everything else... Ovid, Metamorphoses , Book I

72 November 2018

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