The Hapless Child
It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
'Aha, my little dear,' I say,
'Your clan will pay me back one day.'
Dorothy Parker
To The Last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth
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Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser - Death is Life's high meed.
John Keats
It makes me angry. Angry at this guy for taking away this young girl's future, for stopping short her life. What right did he have?
Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
Henry Van Dyke
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How the days stretched out - each one the same as the one before, and they would continue to do so, tediously, until the end of history. And every day we have lived has been the last day of some other fool's life, each day a dot of candle-light showing him the way to his death-bed. Blow the short candle out: life was no more than a walking shadow - a poor actor - who goes through all the emotions in one hour on the stage and then bows out. It was a story told by an idiot, full of noise and passion, but meaningless.
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth
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Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned
Romans 5
Michelle Gardner Quinn's story was picked up by the big news media because it is an exciting missing person's tale. Young, white college girl goes missing...was she kidnapped? Stolen by terrorists? Oh, the drama possibilities were endless! The big media didn't care about Laura Winterbottom. Simple death doesn't hold the same drama possibilities.
What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4
This year Laura would have turned 33 years old, my age. Instead, she was raped and murdered last year by some crazy asshole who carjacked her. It pisses me off. It makes me want to beat someone up, not forgive their surviving family like those goody goody Amish people.
“Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.” - Edward Gorey
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Perhaps passing through the gates of death is like passing quietly through the gate in a pasture fence. On the other side, you keep walking, without the need to look back. No shock, no drama, just the lifting of a plank or two in a simple wooden gate in a clearing. Neither pain, nor floods of light, nor great voices, but just the silent crossing of a meadow.
Mark Helprin, "A Soldier of the Great War"
3 comments:
i felt so sad and sickened too eva :(
bad shit happens anywhere- people have to idyllic a view of Vermont- we're not a fucking postcard- there are murders and rapes and child molesting priests and pain and sadness and suicides and everything else. All sad...
true, bad shit happens everywhere, always has and always will. hard to stomach though...and sad everytime it hits...
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