I’m really fond of the line “shine a bright light”, meaning to expose cruel or shady dealings that need some sunshine on them so they will whizzle up and disappear like a salted slug.
Lots of others, too. “Sue the Bastards.”
“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” Ray Bradbury.
Dear Nancy Mitford, who grew up in stately-home-and-fox-hunting privilege, but later on had to learn to be a non-servant-having person: “I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”
“Love altereth not where it alteration finds.” Shakespeare.
I flove Ogden Nash (Nashville TN is named for an ancestor of his), if I get into favourites of his I’ll never stop, so let’s suffice with “Do you, my poppet, feel infirm? You probably contain a germ.”
And a Dorothy Parker poem, One Perfect Rose:
A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet –
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
‘My fragile leaves,’ it said, ‘his heart enclose.’
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
What do you like by way of comforting poems? A fast quotation that sums up a mood or thought? Please share.
