Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 235
July 31, 2020
MARK TWAIN: THOUGHTS ABOUT DEATH
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.
– on monument erected to Mark Twain & Ossip Gabrilowitsch
All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”– a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
– The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy of the Extraordinary Twins
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
– The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy of the Extraordinary Twins
The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all–the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
– Mark Twain, last written statement; Moments with Mark Twain, Paine
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
– Following the Equator
Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old and weary and broken of heart.
– Adam speech, 1883
Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs–the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
– Letters from the Earth
Manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man.
– Letter to Olivia Clemens, 7/1/1885 (referring to General Grant)
How lovely is death; and how niggardly it is doled out.
– Letter to Olivia Clemens, 8/19/1896
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man’s meat is inferior to pork.
– More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
[I am] not sorry for anybody who is granted the privilege of prying behind the curtain to see if there is any contrivance that is half so shabby and poor and foolish as the invention of mortal life.
– Letter to Mary Mason Fairbanks, 1894
I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead–and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.
– Mark Twain in Eruption
To die one’s self is a thing that must be easy, & light of consequence; but to lose a part of one’s self–well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
– Letter to Will Bowen, 11/4/1888
Favored above Kings and Emperors is the stillborn child.
– Notebook, #42 1898
All people have had ill luck, but Jairus’s daughter & Lazarus the worst.
– Notebook #42, 1898
No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.
– Notebook #42, 1898
Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us others & will not look our way.
– Letter to W. D. Howells, 12/20/1898
A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.
– “The Last Words of Great Men”, 1869
Death….a great Leveler — a king before whose tremendous majesty shades & differences in littleness cannot be discerned — an Alp from whose summit all small things are the same size.
– Letter to Olivia Clemens, 10/15/1871
FINAL INVESTIGATIONS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES PUBLISHED
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” — Sherlock Holmes —
LISTEN TO THE FIRST 15 MINUTES OF THE NEW AUDIOBOOK “SHERLOCK HOLMES – MY LIFE”. The final investigations of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
________________________________
July 30, 2020
BATMAN IS SICK
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
PERLS OF EINSTEIN
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
QUOTATION SOURCE: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/
July 29, 2020
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
The GOOD News is that You are an Immortal Spiritual Being. Therefore, you can not die.
The BAD News is that You are an Immortal Spiritual Being. Therefore, you can not die.
Lawrence R. Spencer
July 28, 2020
CARNIVORE CANNIBAL COWS
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
“You may remember a science fiction movie starring Charlton Heston called “Soylent Green”. (Winner Best Science Fiction Film of Year, 1973 – Saturn Award, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films )
In the movie the character played by Heston discovers that the green pellets being served to people as food each day were being produced from the recycled remains of dead human bodies, making everyone into unwitting cannibals! Is this type of food production just science fiction?
Today, public relation campaigns and catchy slogans notwithstanding, we have a new food chain. For reasons of efficiency and economics, many cattlemen feed their animals anything. Repeat: anything.
Environmental reporters, Satchell and Hedges, tell us: “Agricultural refuse such as corncobs, rice hulls, fruit and vegetable peelings, along with grain byproducts from retail production of baked goods, cereals, and beer, have long been used to fatten cattle.”
The authors continue, “In addition, some 40 billion pounds a year of slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera, as well as the remains of millions of dead cats and dogs passed along by veterinarians and animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed–in the process turning cattle and hogs, which are natural herbivores, into unwitting carnivores.”
Many of America’s once proud cattlemen have not only turned herbivores into carnivores, but have also turned their cows into cannibals!”
— excerpt from THE OZ FACTORS by Lawrence R. Spencer
