O, What a Rogue!

People often say that love is like a drug. But I say that infatuation is a drug and love is the detox.

Politeness. Now, there’s a poor man’s virtue if there ever was one. What’s so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it’s easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what’s left when you’ve failed at everything else. People with ambition don’t give a damn what other people think about them.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

I’m not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced? It’s only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature’s highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we’re expected! But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.