Change and Transformation

And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be!

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use, As though to breathe were life!

 

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro’ the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side. “The curse is come upon me,” cried

 

I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds.

 

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That’s all I say.

 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past!

 

On or about December 1910 human characterchanged. . . . All human relations haveshifted—those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children.And when human relations change there is atthe same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.

How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

L’avenir est comme le reste: il n’est plus ce qu’il était .

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I reckon I got to light out for the Territoryahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’sgoing to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’tstand it. I been there before.

Revolution . . . ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, fromhaving heard what had been done beforecarried to a still greater excess the refinementof their inventions, as manifested to thecunning of their enterprises and the atrocityof their reprisals. Words had to change theirordinary meaning and to take that which wasnow given them.

[ Of Napoleon’s costly victory at the Battle of Borodino, 1812 :] C’est le commencement de la fin . This is the beginning of the end.

[ The character Topsy speaking :] I s’pect I growed.

Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas comeup an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin’.

Every active force produces more than one change—every cause produces more than one effect.

Progress . . . is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature.

The One remains, the many change and pass;

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation . . . that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within , incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell. . . . You enterprised a railroad . . . you blasted its rocks away. . . . And now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted—in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest . . . of his head.