Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought or emotion inside a man. 

Every thing we see today, 

made by past generations, 

was, before its appearance, 

a thought in the mind of a man 

or an impulse in the heart of a woman

 

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit

 

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live

 

Your soul is oftimes a battlefield,

 upon which your reason and your judgement 

wage war against your passion and your appetite

 

Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. 

It was but yesterday we met in a dream. 

You have sung to me in my aloneness 

and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky. ...

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, 

we shall speak again together 

and you shall sing to me a deeper song. 

And if our hands should meet in another dream 

we shall build another tower in the sky.

 

You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. 

That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind. 

It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety, 

But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether.

 If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them.

 Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things,

 but not their end

 

Your other self is always sorry for you. 

But your other self grows on sorrow, so all is well

 

We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. 

But we won't. 

And we're slowly learning that fact. 

And we're very, very pissed off

Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. 

They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed

 

maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves

 

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them to morrow?

 

There lies a green field between the scholar and the poet; 

should the scholar cross it he becomes a wise man; 

should the poet cross it, he becomes a prophet

 

Was the love of Judas' mother of her son less than the love of Mary for Jesus?

 

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms

 

An old man likes to return in memory 

to the days of his youth 

like a stranger who longs to go back to his own country. 

He delights to tell stories of the past 

like a poet who takes pleasure in reciting his best poem. 

He lives spiritually in the past 

because the present passes swiftly, 

and the future seems to him 

an approach to the oblivion of the grave.

 An hour full of old memories

 passed like the shadows

 of the trees over the grass

 

Said a sheet of snow-white paper, “Pure was I created, and pure will I remain forever. I would rather be burnt and turn to white ashes than suffer darkness to touch me or the unclean to come near me.”  

The ink-bottle heard what the paper was saying, and it laughed in its dark heart; but it never dared to approach her. 

And the multicoloured pencils heard her also, and they too never came near her.

  And the snow-white sheet of paper did remain pure and chaste forever, pure and chaste—and empty

 

In the morning, when I walked in the fields, 

I saw the token of Eternity in the awakening of nature,

 and when I sat by the seashore

 I heard the waves singing the song of Eternity

 

The owl 

whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day 

cannot unveil the mystery of light. 

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, 

open your heart wide unto the body of life. 

For life and death are one,

 even as the river and the sea are one

 

the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain

 

Remembrance is a form of meeting

Forgetfulness is a form of freedom

 

Every man is two men; 

One is awake in the darkness, 

the other asleep in the light

 

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? 

Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, 

and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters

 

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. 

It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. 

Nothing is static,

 everything is evolving, 

everything is falling apart

 

Should you sit upon a cloud you would not see the boundary line between one country and another, 

nor the boundary stone between a farm and a farm.

It is a pity you cannot sit upon a cloud

 

If the prodigal son had never left home, 

the fatted calf would still be alive

 

There will be mistakes, 

and maybe the point is not to forget the rest of yourself 

if one little part might go bad

 

The worst job in the whole world must be recycling toilet paper

 

A lot of  people try to impress the world and buy too many things

 

The club is too loud to talk, 

so after a couple of drinks, everyone feels like the centre of attention

 but completely cut off from participating with anyone else.

You're the corpse in an English murder mystery

 

pump the hand pump

until the plumbing was superpressurized to 110 psi. 

This way, when
someone goes to flush a toilet, the toilet tank will explode.

 At 150 psi, if
someone turns on the shower, the water pressure will blow off the shower
head, strip the threads, blam, the shower head turns into a mortar shell.

 

You do the job you're trained to do.

 Pull a lever. 

Push a button. 

You don't understand any of it

, and then you just die

 

We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, 

and show them courage by frightening them

 

The things you own end up owning you

 

Watching white moon face

The stars never feel anger

Blah, blah, blah, the end

 

Without just one nest

A bird can call the world home

Life is your career

 

This is our world now,

 and those ancient people are dead

 

There are bodies buried everywhere 

you just have to know where to look

 

Nothing is static

 

 you're not how much money you've got in the bank. 

You're not your job. 

You're not your family, 

and you're not who you tell yourself.

You're not your name

You're not your problems.

You're not your age.

You are not your hopes.

You will not be saved.

We are all going to die, someday.

 

The perfume, 

all those dead whales in the cuts in her hands, 

it stings

 

Napoleon bragged 

that he could train men to sacrifice their lives

 for a scrap of a ribbon

 

 the woman in Dear Abby who married a handsome successful mortician and on their wedding night, he made her soak in a tub of ice water until her skin was freezing to the touch, and then he made her lie in bed completely still while he had intercourse with her cold inert body. 

The funny thing is this woman had done this as a newlywed, and gone on to do it for the next ten years of marriage and now she was writing to Dear Abby to ask if Abby thought it meant something.

 

all the things that people love intensely and then dump an hour or a day after. 

The way a Christmas tree is the center of attention, 

then, after Christmas you see those dead Christmas trees with the tinsel still on them, 

dumped alongside the highway

 

You take enough blasting gelatin and wrap the foundation columns of anything, you can topple any building in the world. 

You have to tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the column and not out into the parking garage around the column.

“You can mix the glycerin with nitric acid to make nitroglycerin," Tyler says.

"You can mix the nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite," Tyler says.

"You can mix the nitroglycerin with more nitric acid and paraffin and make gelatin explosives,

The nouvelle cuisine of anarchy. 

Barium nitrate in a sauce of sulfur and garnished with charcoal. 

That's your basic gunpowder. 

Bon appetit

You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. 

Do this in an ice bath. 

Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper.

 You have nitroglycerin

Three ways to make napalm:

One, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate,

 Two, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and diet cola. 

Three, you can dissolve crumbled cat litter in gasoline until the mixture is thick.

A paste of lye and water can burn through an aluminum pan.

A solution of lye will dissolve a wooden spoon

 

You’re a projectionist and you’re tired and angry, but mostly you’re bored 

so you start by taking a single frame of pornography collected by some other projectionist that you find stashed away in the booth, 

and you splice this frame of a lunging red penis or a yawning wet vagina close-up into another feature movie.

 This is one of those pet adventures, when the dog and cat are left behind by a traveling family and must find their way home. In reel three, just after the dog and cat, who have human voices and talk to each other, have eaten out of a garbage can, there’s the flash of an erection.

 

We are God's middle children

 with no special place in history and no special attention

 

the all-singing, all-dancing crap of this world

 the toxic waste by-product of God’s creation

 

Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. 

They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed

 

Generations have been working in jobs they hate, 

just so they can buy what they don't really need

 

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time 

 

the first step to eternal life is you have to die

 

Which is worse: 

Hell or nothing?

 

For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. 

I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. 

And account for every drop of used motor oil. 

And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born

 

If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?

 

You have to give up! 

You have to realize that someday you will die,

Until you know that, you are useless!

 

the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. 

You slip it on when you meet a stranger. 

You dance all night, 

then you throw it away

 

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. 

Like the first monkey shot into space

 

A person had to work hard for it, 

but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. 

A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection

 

everything you ever love will reject you or die. 

Everything you ever create will be thrown away.

 Everything you're proud of will end up as trash

 

Worker bees can leave.

Even drones can fly away.

The Queen is their slave

 

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!

 

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, 

which would you choose?

 

On a long enough time line, 

the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

 

We are not special. 

We are not crap or trash, either. 

We just are. 

We just are, and what happens just happens

 

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, 

working jobs we hate 

so we can buy shit we don't need

 

Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head

 

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly

 

If I could wake up in a different place, 

at a different time, 

could I wake up as a different person?

 

 I see all this potential and I see squandering. 

an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, 

advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. 

We're the middle children of the history  

no purpose or place, 

we have no Great war,

 no Great depression,

 our great war is a spiritual war,

 our great depression is our lives

 

 if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. 

If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you.

 Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. 

You had their full attention. 

People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. 

And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. 

When the two of you talked, you were building something,

 and afterward you were both different than before.

 

everything you can ever accomplish 

will end up as trash

 

who is he that can offend the spirit? 

Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, 

or the firefly the stars?

 

A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; 

at each stage it is the same thing 

— a flower in the process of expressing its potential

Happy Star Wars Day

 

May The Fourth Be With You 

 

Waiters will always pee in soup, 

people will always fall in love

 

What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God.

If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. 

And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?

What you end up doing is you spend your life searching for a father and God.

What you have to consider is the possibility that God doesn't like you. 

Could be, God hates us. 

This is not the worst thing that can happen

 

The amazing miracle of death, 

when one second you're walking and talking,

 and the next second you're an object

 

 

getting God's attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. 

Maybe God's hate is better than His indifference.

If you could be either God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

We are God's middle children,  with no special place in history and no special attention.

Unless we get God's attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.

Which is worse, hell or nothing?

Only if we're caught and punished can we be saved.

 

Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort.

 In death we become heroes

 

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, 

but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 

"Wow! What a Ride!

 

Burn the Louvre, and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. 

This way at least, God would know our names

 

Our culture has made us all the same. 

No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. 

We all want the same.

 Individually, we are nothing

 

The more things you own, the more they own you

 

It's only after you lose everything 

that you're free to do anything

 

The things you own end up owning you. 

It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

 You buy furniture. 

You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.

 Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. 

Then the right set of dishes. 

Then the perfect bed. 

The drapes. 

The rug. 

Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, 

and the things you used to own,

 now they own you

 

The things you used to own, 

now they own you

 

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? 

Well, it works both ways

 

You are not special. 

You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. 

You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. 

We're all part of the same compost heap.

 We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world

 

You are not your job, 

you're not how much money you have in the bank. 

You are not the car you drive.

 You're not the contents of your wallet. 

You are not your fucking khakis. 

You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world

 

This is your life and its ending one moment at a time

 

The perfume, 

all those dead whales in the cuts in her hands, 

it stings

 

It's only after we've lost everything 

that we're free to do anything

 

The brooks flow to their lover, the sea, 

and the flowers smile at the object of their passion, the light. 

The mist rolls down to its beloved, the valley. 

 

Man will be on the path to perfection 

when he feels that he is one with space that knows no bounds and with the ocean that has no shores; 

when he becomes that undying fire, 

that ever-gleaming light,

 that still air or that violent storm,

 those clouds charged with lightning, thunder and rain,

 those rivers merry or sad,

 those trees in bloom or shedding their leaves,

 those lands that rise up into mountains or slope down into valleys, 

those fields under seed or lying fallow.

 

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,   

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.