Keep your face towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.
TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.
Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.
Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
Of Equality–as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself–as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.
O the joy of my spirit–it is uncaged–it darts like lightning!It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,I will have thousands of globes and all time.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I loveIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I meanBut I shall be good health to you nonethelessAnd filter and fibre your blood.
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me.
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.
What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.
Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.