On all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity--I have letters to make even blind... men see.... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough--I call it mankind's single immortal blemish.... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose--following Christianity's first day!--Why not following its last day, instead?--Following today?--Transvaluation of all values!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Day by day, dear Lord, of thee three things I pray: to see thee more clearly,... love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each day I live in a glass room Unless I break it with the thrusting... Of my senses and pass through The splintered walls to the great landscape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long.... Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mexico is a nineteenth-century country arranged for gaslight. Once brought into the harsh light of the twentieth-century media, Me...xico can only seem false. In its male, in its public, its city aspect, Mexico is an arch-tranvestite, a tragic buffoon. Dogs bark and babies cry when Mother Mexico walks abroad in the light of day. The policeman, the Marxist mayor--Mother Mexico doesn't even bother to shave her mustachios. Swords and rifles and spurs and bags of money chink and clatter beneath her skirts. A chain of martyred priests dangles from her waist, for she is an austere, pious lady. Ay, how much--clutching her jangling bosoms; spilling cigars--how much she has suffered.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So unrecorded did it slip away, So blind was I to see and to foresee,... So dull to mark the budding of my tree That would not blossom yet for many a May. If only I could recollect it, such A day of days! I let it come and go As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow; It seemed to mean so little, meant so much; If only now I could recall that touch, First touch of hand in hand--Did one but know!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The twelve-thousand-day honeymoon is over.... Hands crumble like clay, the mouth, its bewildered tongue, turns yellow with pain....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If thou survive my well-contented day When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,... And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover; Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme Exceeded by the height of happier men. Oh, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought-- \'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He that shall see this day and live old age Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors... And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »