Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophesy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are going to the god they serve.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away...A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I…

They darted down and rose up like a wave Or buzzed impetuously as before; One would have thought the corpse was held a slave To living by the life it bore!

And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade