Emotions and Feelings

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

To do something, say something, seesomething, before anybody else—these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, letus shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

I’ve just read your lousy review [of a concert by Truman’s daughter, Margaret]. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.” It seems to me that you are afrustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppycock as was in the back section of the paperyou work for it shows conclusively that you’reoff the beam and at least four of your ulcersare at work. Some day I hope to meet you.When that happens you’ll need a new nose, alot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps asupporter below!

Democratic nations care but little for whathas been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure. . . . Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t knowwhat he likes.

I hear many condemn these men because theywere so few. When were the good and the braveever in a majority?

The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. What is called resignation isconfirmed desperation.

The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. What is called resignation isconfirmed desperation.

It is Nixon himself who represents thatdark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

We were somewhere around Barstow on theedge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We know we can do it—we haven’t lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor.

[ Of the Irish Republican Army bombing inBrighton intended to assassinate her :] This was the day I was meant not to see.

[ On the reconquest of South Georgia in the Falklands War :] Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines. Rejoice!

They’ve [the Labor Government] got the usual Socialist disease—they’ve run out of other people’s money.

Much wished, hoped little, and demanded nought.

Although reason were intended by Providenceto govern our passions, yet it seems that, in two points of the greatest moment to the being and continuance of the world, God hath intendedour passions to prevail over reason. The first is, the propagation of our species, since no wiseman ever married from the dictates of reason.The other is, the love of life, which, from the dictates of reason, every man would despise, and wish it at an end, or that it never had abeginning.

I’m going to the Land of Nod.

Ingratitude is among them a capital Crime, . . . For they reason thus: that whoever makes ill Returns to his Benefactor, must needs be a common Enemy to the rest of Mankind, from whom he hath received no Obligation; andtherefore such a Man is not fit to live.

I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is towardsindividuals. . . . I hate and detest that animalcalled man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

Hence a commander who advances without any thought of winning personal fame andwithdraws in spite of certain punishment, whose only concern is to protect his people and promote the interests of his ruler, is the nation’s treasure.

The victorious army only enters battle afterhaving first won the victory, while the defeatedarmy only seeks victory after having firstentered the fray.