Colleen

“Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

“it wont be long now it wont be long
man is making deserts of the earth
it wont be long now
before man will have used it up
so that nothing but ants
and centipedes and scorpions
can find a living on it
....
what man calls civilization
always results in deserts
....
men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn
....
it wont be long now it wont be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone”
― Don Marquis, Archy Does His Part

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“I’m reminded of Orville Tethington, inventor of the world’s first steam-powered fog machine. He’s also the guy who, after the Germans invented the flame thrower in WWI, decided to counteract it with his own creation, the candle thrower. The candle thrower was only battle tested once, and after fifteen minutes the war zone was littered with lit candles. Upon returning home after the war, some of the soldiers suffered such extreme and bizarre cases of PTSD that anytime a civilian lit a match or used their lighter, the soldiers would hit the ground and start singing “Happy Birthday.”
― Jarod Kintz, I Should Have Renamed This