We don't communicate like this any more....

[mediocre]

It's a lost art. 140 characters takes away the richness, the imagery, the meaning.

The 286 words of the Gettysburg Adress


35 of the greatest words ever strung together....

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

A love letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf...

…I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.

Jefferson letter to Adams upon reading that Abigail had died....

The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your letter of October the 20th had given me ominous foreboding. Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicine. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain, but that it is of some comfort to us both, that the term is not very distant, at which we are to deposit in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love and never lose again. God bless you and support you under your heavy affliction.

Just a few examples. Post your own.

Kthxbye

 

[islandman]

STFU, miles.

 

[parodyluvr75]

Sue - I have lived by this.

It is the lingering emblem of the Heaven I once dreamed, and though if this is taken, I shall remain alone, and though in that last day, the Jesus Christ you love, remark he does not know me - there is a darker spirit will not disown its child.

Few have been given me, and if I love them so, that for idolatry, they are removed from me - I simply murmur gone, and the billow dies away into the boundless blue, and no one knows but me, that one went down today. We have walked very pleasantly – Perhaps this is the point at which our paths diverge - then pass on singing Sue, and up the distant hill I journey on.

Emily

 

[parodyluvr75]

I am a prisoner here in the name of the King; they can take my life, but not the love that I feel for you. Yes, my adorable mistress, to-night I shall see you, and if I had to put my head on the block to do it.

For heaven's sake, do not speak to me in such disastrous terms as you write; you must live and be cautious; beware of madame your mother as of your worst enemy. What do I say? Beware of everybody; trust no one; keep yourself in readiness, as soon as the moon is visible; I shall leave the hotel incognito, take a carriage or a chaise, we shall drive like the wind to Sheveningen; I shall take paper and ink with me; we shall write our letters.

If you love me, reassure yourself; and call all your strength and presence of mind to your aid; do not let your mother notice anything, try to have your pictures, and be assured that the menace of the greatest tortures will not prevent me to serve you. No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives. Adieu, there is nothing that I will not brave for your sake; you deserve much more than that. Adieu, my dear heart!

Voltaire

 

[oggbashan]

Sir Walter Raleigh

Found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster.

Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

Sir Walter Raleigh 1552 -1618

Written the night before his execution. Raleigh was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster on 29 October 1618.

 

[oggbashan]

Dylan Thomas

Elegy

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead

Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the liught of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go

Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

Until I die he will not leave my side.)


Dylan Thomas

 

[killallhippies]

yay! a poem! this is my favorite for no good reason. well, besides the last several lines and nobody.


To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

that's william blake, son. if you don't love him you can go ahead and die.

 

[islandman]

King Arthur: [after Arthur's cut off both of the Black Knight's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left.
Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.

 

[Sean]

Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du
Yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, Ba du dop
Ba du bop, Ba du dop
Ba du
Yeah

Oh yeah
In an Mmmbop they're gone
Yeah yeah


Hanson

 

[Saint Peter]

Hey now, hey

Hey, do you know what you are?
You’re an asshole
Asshole

Some of you might not agree ‘cause you probably likes a lot of misery
But think a while and you will see...
Broken hearts are for assholes
Broken hearts are for assholes (Are you an asshole?)
Broken hearts are for assholes (Are you an asshole too?)
Whatcha gonna do ‘cause you're an asshole?

No, no, no
Yeah, yeah, yeah
I said, “You are an asshole”

Maybe you think you're a lonely guy
And maybe you think you're too tough to cry
So you went to the grape, just to give it a try
And Dagmar (Without a doubt, the ugliest sonofabitch I ever saw in my life) was his name
(One two three four)
The whiskers sticking out from underneath of his pancake make-up (And yet, he was a beautiful lady) nearly drove you insane
(Lets talk about leather)
And so you kissed a little sailor (Tex Abel, starring in the latest Shepperton production) who had just blew in from Spain
(Sir Richard Pump-a-loaf)
You sniffed the reeking buns of angel (The story of a demented bread-boffer) and acted like it was cocaine
(Cucumber pud annexed to a fine whole-wheat loaf)
You were dazzled by the exciting new costume of ko-ko (Then on Tuesday night, Ceasar’s back in town) in a way you can't explain
(Facing off in a no-holds-barred tag team grudge match with Kona)
And so you worked the wall with Michael (Three-hundred-seventy-nine pounds of Samoan dynamite)
Which gave your back an awful strain (Volcanic hell)
But you came back on sunday for the gong shows (Next Thursday, Teen Towns finest ??????????) but you forgot what I was sayin’
’Cause you're an asshole, you're an asshole
That's right
Youre an asshole, you're an asshole
Yes, yes
Youre an asshole, you're an asshole
That's right
Youre an asshole, you're an asshole

Well, now you been to the grape, you been to the chest
Now I think you know what you are
You're an asshole

You say you can't live with what you been through
Well, ladies you can be an asshole too
You might pretend you aint got one on the bottom of you
But don't fool yourself girl, it’s lookin’ at you
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s winkin’ at you
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s blinkin’ at you
That's why I say, “I’m gonna ram it, ram it, ram it ram it up your poop chute” (Corn hole)
Ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop chute (Fist fuck)
Ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop chute (Wrist-watch; Crisco)
Ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop chute (Pud)
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s goin’ right up your poop chute
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s goin’ right up your poop chute
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s goin’ right up your poop chute
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s goin’ right up your poop chute
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s goin’ right up your poop chute
Don't fool yourself girl, it’s goin’ right up your poop chute



~Zappa

 

[killallhippies]

i had a friend who loved hanson until he found out he wasn't a girl. it took like half a day to do that, too. he was so pissed. poor fucker.

 

[islandman]

Your friend realized he wasn't a girl?

Or that Hanson wasn't a girl?

Either way, that's funny.

 

[Sean]

i had a friend who loved hanson until he found out he wasn't a girl. it took like half a day to do that, too. he was so pissed. poor fucker.

Same thing happened to a mate of mine when Culture Club first appeared. When we told him Boy George was, you know, a boy he was gutted.

 

[killallhippies]

the lead singer of hanson. i'm pretty sure there was lots of unwitting homoerotic masturbation involved. he was just that kind of guy.

 

[killallhippies]

Same thing happened to a mate of mine when Culture Club first appeared. When we told him Boy George was, you know, a boy he was gutted.

boy george? that's even better.

 

[phrodeau]

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Francis Pharcellus Church.

 

[oggbashan]

Sir Philip Sidney

His advice to authors:

''Thus, with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.''

 

[oggbashan]

Thomas Love Peacock

1. I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

2. A book that furnishes no quotations is no book - it is a plaything.

3. I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

4. Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse pond.

5. Not drunk is he who from the floor -
Can rise alone and still drink more;
But drunk is They, who prostrate lies,
Without the power to drink or rise.

6. There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it.

Born: October 18, 1785
Died: January 23, 1866

 

[oggbashan]

Ernest Bramah 1868 -1942

1. A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment.

2. Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

3. He who thinks he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a pit.

4. Where the road bends abruptly, take short steps.

 

[oggbashan]

G K Chesterton 1874 - 1936

1. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

2. And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

3. To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

4. The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

5. Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

6. The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

7. A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

8. A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

9. Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

10. When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

11. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

12. A room without books is like a body without a soul.

13. Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

14. Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

15. When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

16. Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

17. The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

18. Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

19. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

20. The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

21. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

22. I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

23. Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

24. The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

 

[MidgetClown]

"We've Only Know Each Other" by Navin R. Johnson

I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.

 

[SeaDaddy1]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

[LadyVer]

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

 

[run_silent]

Trying to think what the Lord of the Rings would have been like in 144 words.

 

[XdOu™]

STFU, miles.

..lol