Feelings and Thoughts

There are two kinds of obscurity; one arises from a lack of feelings and thoughts, which have been replaced by words; the other from an abundance of feelings and thoughts, and the inadequacy of words to express them.
--Alexander Pushkin

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with a muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead,
Scribbling on the sky the message `He Is Dead',
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policeman wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden, April 1936

Common Sense

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense."
-- Buddha

The Days of Wine and Roses

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream

Ernest Dowson

Life

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy ;

In general, "as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers: so is our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies: Invicem cedunt dolor et voluptas," there is a succession of pleasure and pain.

Kierkegaard's tomb

Kierkegaard, Journals (May 14, 1847, tr. Alexander Dru):

I wish that on my grave might be put "the individual."

Here is a photograph of Kierkegaard's tomb. It does not say "the individual," at least on the part visible in the photograph.

What do you want on your tombstone?

A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT

A Little Definition: Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
A Little Reflection: Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
A Little Proverb: If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before!
A Little Question: I love to give homemade gifts... which one of my kids do you want?
A Little Wisdom: If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.