Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Grosse Seelen Dulden Still
Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar for the Country (New York: William Sloan Associates, 1949), p. 93 (September):
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To accuse his fate and to rail against it, is man's dubious prerogative. Few would be willing to deny it to themselves but it is not attractive in others. And that, certainly, is one of the reasons why the fellowship with animals who, for the most part, will not compete with us in lamentations, is so agreeable.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 32:
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,Related posts: Hiding Troubles; Nietzsche on Emotional Incontinence; Buckled Lips; Emotional Incontinence; Euripidea; Hostile Laughter; Hostile Laughter in Euripides' Medea; Icy Laughter; Notes to Myself; On Concealing One's Misfortunes; Quotations about Complaints.
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
