Anger and Indignation

Well, my daddy left home when I was three, And didn’t leave much to Ma and me, Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze. Now I don’t blame him because he run and hid, But the meanest thing he ever did was Before he left, he went and named me Sue.

 

“I hate you, I hate you!” cried Madeline, a thing I didn’t know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy.

There are only two great diseases in the world today—Bolshevism and Americanism; and Americanism is the worse of the two, because Bolshevism only smashes your house or your business or your skull, but Americanism smashes your soul.

 

124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.

But when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride , it immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience.

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.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

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

 

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

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.

 

I am the wound and the knife! I am the blow and the cheek! I am the limbs and the wheel— The victim and the executioner! 6

Towards thee I roll thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.

 

Oh that press will have me now!

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.

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. . . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Men must either be caressed or extinguished; because they avenge themselves of light offenses, but of the grave ones they cannot. So the offense one does to a man must be such that one not fear vengeance for it.

Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you’re scum. Don’t mean nothing itself, it’s the way they say it.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’tstraight.

Huffy Henry hid the day, Unappeasable Henry sulked.