"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against
the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better,
but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse
than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking
primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions,
to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley
"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination.
All others are subsumed by it."
-- Diane DiPrima, "Rant", from Pieces of a Song.
"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
i hope i still have that many marbles running around when i reach his age
:) And as it happens, I was reading another good piece just now: What Do Subsidized Corn, A Militarized Border, and Finance Reform Have To Do With It? … and notice in the footer that the writer turned a sprightly 97 this year. Go Doris “Granny D” Haddock!