1
" TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty. "
― Walt Whitman , Leaves of Grass
3
" From birth to death and further on
As we were born and introduced into this world,
We had a gift hard to express by word
And somewhere in our continuous road,
It kind of lost it sense and turned.
There was that time we sure remember,
When everything was now and 'till forever
Children with no worries and no regrets,
The only goal was making a few friends.
But later on everything has changed,
By minds that had it all arranged
To bring the people into stress,
Into creating their own mess.
We have been slaved by our own mind,
Turned into something out of our kind
Slowly faded away from the present time,
Forced to believe in lies, in fights and crime.
They made it clearly a fight of the ego,
A never ending war that won't just go
They made it a competitive game,
To seek selfish materialistic fame.
They turned us one against eachother,
Man against man, brother against brother
Dividing us by religion and skin color,
Making us fight to death over a dollar.
Making us lose ourselves in sadly thoughts,
Wasting our days by living in the past
Depressed and haunted by the memories,
And yet still hoping to fly in our dreams.
Some of us tried learning how to dance,
Step after step, giving our soul a new chance
Some of us left our ego vanish into sounds,
Thus being aware of our natural bounce.
Some tried expressing in their rhymes,
The voice of a generation which never dies
They reached eternity through poetry
Leaving the teachings that shall fulfill the prophecy
Others have found their way through spirituality,
Becoming conscious of the human duality
Seeking the spiritual enlightenment,
Of escaping an ego-oriented fighting
Science, philosophy, religion,
Try to explain the human origin.
Maybe changes are yet to come,
And it shall be better for some
Death's for the spirit not an end,
But a relieving of the embodiment
So I believe that furthermore,
We'll understand the power of our soul
But leaving behind all we know,
And all that we might not yet know
It all resumes to that certain truth,
That we all seek to once conclude. "
― Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache
6
" The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object—the joy of living—is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road. "
― Eiji Yoshikawa , Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan
11
" A man who is awake in the open field at night or who wanders over silent paths experiences the world differently than by day. Nighness vanishes, and with it distance; everything is equally far and near, close by us and yet mysteriously remote. Space loses its measures. There are whispers and sounds, and we do not know where or what they are. Our feelings too are peculiarly ambiguous. There is a strangeness about what is intimate and dear, and a seductive charm about the frightening. There is no longer a distinction between the lifeless and the living, everything is animate and soulless, vigilant and asleep at once. What the day brings on and makes recognizable gradually, emerges out of the dark with no intermediary stages. The encounter suddenly confronts us, as if by a miracle: What is the thing we suddenly see - an enchanted bride, a monster, or merely a log? Everything teases the traveller, puts on a familiar face and the next moment is utterly strange, suddenly terrifies with awful gestures and immediately resumes a familiar and harmless posture.Danger lurks everywhere. Out of the dark jaws of the night which gape beside the traveller, any moment a robber may emerge without warning, or some eerie terror, or the uneasy ghost of a dead man - who knows what may once have happened at that very spot? Perhaps mischievous apparitions of the fog seek to entice him from the right path into the desert where horror dwells, where wanton witches dance their rounds which no man ever leaves alive. Who can protect him, guide him aright, give him good counsel? The spirit of Night itself, the genius of its kindliness, its enchantment, its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom. She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care, and she causes dreams to play about their souls. Her protection is enjoyed by the un-happy and persecuted as well as by the cunning, whom her ambivalent shadows offer a thousand devices and contrivances. With her veil she also shields lovers, and her darkness keeps ward over all caresses, all charms hidden and revealed. Music is the true language of her mystery - the enchanting voice which sounds for eyes that are closed and in which heaven and earth, the near and the far, man and nature, present and past, appear to make themselves understood.But the darkness of night which so sweetly invites to slumber also bestows new vigilance and illumination upon the spirit. It makes it more perceptive, more acute, more enterprising. Knowledge flares up, or descends like a shooting star - rare, precious, even magical knowledge.And so night, which can terrify the solitary man and lead him astray, can also be his friend, his helper, his counsellor. "
14
" Unconnected to the life of love, uncolored by love, the world resumes its own, its natural and callous importance. This is first a blow, then an odd consolation. And already I felt my old self - my old, devious, ironic, isolated self - beginning to breathe again and stretch and settle, though all around it my body clung cracked and bewildered, in the stupid pain of loss. "
― Alice Munro , Lives of Girls and Women