The Hell with Quiet Desperation

Carpe diem!

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation. – Sir Walter Scott

“And then I can die happy.” That is one of my favorite saying. Not that I want to die now, but considering how I have lived my life, nothing much could happen between now and death in the next 30 years, and I could still die happy. That’s how fun my past was. Of course I want the present and future to be just as fun, but it doesn’t have to be. If I never have sex again, I can still die happy. I’ve had my fun. PS Do you any of you like Scott? It is fashionable to hate him as some sort of a hack, but I am reading some of his poetry now (he wrote book-length poems) and I must say, it is pretty awesome. In recent years, Scott has come somewhat back into favor as the academy has found some grounds for appreciating him. About time.

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0 thoughts on “The Hell with Quiet Desperation”

  1. “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
    ― You know who
    That was the way I was running my life even prior to reading any Dr. Duke.
    a good one from ‘Where the Buffalo Roam’
    ‘Laszlo wasn’t insane. He just had very strange rhythms. He stomped on the Terra’
    I have hung onto that one for a long time, hoping it is said aboot me at some point.

  2. I am at the point in my life where only one thing matters to me:
    Peace.
    Personal peace. Quiet. I will fight to secure and maintain it.
    As for the rest, as Thackeray wrote (and Kubrick cribbed) in “Barry Lyndon”:
    “Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”

  3. “High though his titles, proud his name,
    Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
    Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
    The wretch, concentred all in self,
    Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
    And, doubly dying, shall go down
    To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
    Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”
    That one is good. Not so much the meaning for me, just how brilliantly its written.
    http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/breathes-there-man

    1. I like Scott’s poems. He has some book-length poems too. I have The Lady of the Lake. Pretty impressive stuff. To Hell with these snobs who don’t like him.

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