If only I could see
my fields and steppes again.
Won‘t the good Lord let me,
in my old age,
be free?
I‘d go to Ukraine,
I‘d go back home.
There they‘d greet me—
glad to see the old man.
There I‘d rest,
I‘d pray to God,
There I‘d—but why go on?
There will be nothing.
How am I to live in slavery
with no hope?
Do tell me,
please,
lest I go crazy
1848
“I finally saw that Fred Hampton was fearless. Literally, without fear. And as we listened to the speeches, again and again, it became apparent he had accommodated death. He knew he was going to die... Hampton had simply set that fear to rest. He was free. Thus he was able to speak clean simple truths that hit you like a thunderbolt.“
“Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days”
“But I shall give less thought to the future, I shall work in the present. I feel such work is within my power. For I only succeed in small things, and when I am tried by anxiety, I am bound to say it is the small joys that release me.”
“The shortness of life, the dullness of the senses, the numbness of indifference and unprofitable occupations allow us to know but very little. And again and again swift oblivion, the embezzler of knowledge and the enemy of memory, shakes out of the mind, in the course of time, even what we knew.”
“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.”
“It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appal him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentarie to himself... unless... called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other cases, the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the object, which merits the same judgement as a similar lack of perspective toward men.”
Illustration of American author John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
