Emotions and Feelings

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish tohave them in the neighborhood, intrudinginto my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world thatcontained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.

 

Was there a man dismay’d?

 

Theirs not to make reply,

 

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

 

Wearing all that weight

 

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

 

[ Paying tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt after her death on 7 Nov. 1962 :] I have lost more than a belovedfriend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

 

[The Republican Party] had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

 

Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, theanonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab andanything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say toyou that it is not America.

 

Our lives no longer feel ground under them.

 

Since Life is but a Dream,

 

And if tonight my soul may find her peace

 

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope .

 

Life seems to me like a Japanese picture which our imagination does not allow to end with the margin. We aim at the infinite and when our arrow falls to earth it is in flames.

 

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one’s self: “The work is done.” But just as one says that, the answer comes: “The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.” The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be, while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.

 

Vengeance imports a feeling of blame, and an opinion, however distorted by passion, that a wrong has been done. It can hardly go very far beyond the case of a harm intentionally inflicted: even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.

 

I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony.

 

[ On the Iran-Contra scandal :] Clearly, mistakes were made.

 

I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

 

[ Explaining how to fly :] You just think lovely wonderful thoughts and they lift you up in the air.

 

[ Response to being asked, “Where do you live?” :] Second to the right and then straight on till morning.

 

The unpublished manuscript is like an unconfessed sin that festers in the soul, corrupting and contaminating it.

To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible of punishments so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it and dread it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.