People From Pennsylvania

"The one injurious and fatal fact of our present church work is the barrier between the churches and the poorest classes. The first thing for us to do is to demolish this barrier. The impression is abroad among the poor that they are not wanted in the churches. This impression is either correct or incorrect. If it is correct, then there is no missionary work, for us who are pastors, half so urgent as the conversion of our congregations to Christianity. If it is incorrect, we are still guilty before God in that we have allowed such an impression to go abroad; and we are bound to address ourselves, at once and with all diligence, to the business of convincing the poor people that they are wanted, and will be made welcome in the churches."

"The substance of all realities is in this religion of Jesus Christ; but it can be real only to those who will do His will."

"O Master, let me walk with Thee In lowly paths of service free; Tell me Thy secret; help me bear The strain of toil, the fret of care."

"The wayfaring man, Christ Jesus, has helped many and many a tired traveler home with burdens quite as heavy as yours. Often and often He goes up and down this thoroughfare of life in search of just such overladen pilgrims; and His voice is sounding forth above all the babble of the busy tongues and the clatter of the busy wheels, saying, — "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.""

"Every one of us may know what is the ruling purpose of his life; and he who knows that his ruling purpose is to trust and follow Christ knows that he is a Christian."

"The gospel has been very imperfectly heard by any one to whom it has brought no other tidings than that of personal salvation. For in truth the individual is saved only when he is put into right relations to the community in which he lives, and the establishment of these right relations among men is the very work that Christ came to do. The individual gospel and the social gospel are therefore vitally related, inseparably bound together no more come to the man apart from the community, than life can come to the branch when it is separated from the vine."

"We have never yet had upon the earth a society representing on any large scale, the principles of the teaching of Jesus. We have had many societies, whose main reliance was on military force; many societies resting upon slavery or serfdom; many societies founded on feudal distinctions of ruling and serving classes; many societies whose regulative principle was competition, or a struggle for advantage and mastery; but we have never yet seen a society which rested upon the law of brotherhood and the principle of service."

"The establishment and maintenance of sound and fair social conditions; so that there should be no oppression nor injustice, but a square deal for everybody; so that the strong should not be permitted to prey upon the weak; so that the law of helpfulness should prevail, instead of the law of ravine ... such sound and fair social conditions would bring to the community in which they were established and maintained, unexampled, and marvelous prosperity; and this prosperity and peace and happiness would promptly advertise themselves and set up an irresistible attraction. Such a society as this would be a magnet that would draw to itself, all the children of men. They would all want to be in it."

"Knowledge alone is the being of Nature, Giving a soul to her manifold features, Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness, The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song."

"Experienced military and intelligence professionals know that torture, in addition to being illegal and immoral, is an unreliable means of extracting information from prisoners. Much is being made of former CIA official John Kiriakou's statement that waterboarding "broke" a high-value terrorist involved in the 9/11 plot. There are always those who, whether out of fear or inexperience, rush to push the panic button instead of relying on what we know works best and most reliably in these situations. I would caution those who would rely on this example. It is far from clear that the information obtained from this prisoner through illegal means could not have been obtained through lawful methods. The FBI was getting good intelligence from this prisoner before the CIA took over. And there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually puts our own troops and our nation at risk."

"No visitors shall yonder valley find. Except the spirits of the rain and wind: Here you must bide, my friends, with me entombed In this dim crypt, where shelved around us lie The mummied authors."

"Thunder-spasms the waking be Into Life from Apathy: Life, not Death, is in the gale, — Let the coming Doom prevail!"

"Yes, let the Angel blow! A peal from the parted heaven, The first of seven!— The warning, not yet the sign, of woe! That men arise And look about them with wakened eyes, Behold on their garments the dust and slime, Refrain, forbear, Accept the weight of a nobler care And take reproach from the fallen time!"

"Once let the Angel blow! — A peal from the parted heaven, The first of seven! For the time is come that was foretold So long ago! As the avalanche gathers, huge and cold, From the down of the harmless snow, The years and the ages gather and hang Till the day when the word is spoken: When they that dwell in the end of time Are smitten alike for the early crime, As the vials of wrath are broken!"

"All, wherein I have part, All that was loss or gain, Slips from the clasping heart, Breaks from the grasping brain. Lo, what is left? I am bare As a new-born soul, — I am naught: My deeds are dust in air, My words are ghosts of thought. I ride through the night alone, Detached from the life that seemed, And the best I have felt or known Is less than the least I dreamed."

"The hollows are heavy and dank With the steam of the Goldenrods."

"Peace the offspring is of Power."

"Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing: The bravest are the tenderest,— The loving are the daring."

"They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory; Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang Annie Lawrie."

"From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry: I love thee, I love but thee, With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!"

"If she but smile, the crystal calm shall break In music, sweeter than it ever gave, As when a breeze breathes o'er some sleeping lake, And laughs in every wave."

"With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise."

"Within the sober realm of leafless trees, The russet year inhaled the dreamy air; Like some tanned reaper, in his hour of ease, When all the fields are lying brown and bare."

"The terrible rumble, grumble and roar Telling the battle was on once more— And Sheridan twenty miles away!"

"O Night! most beautiful and rare! Thou givest the heavens their holiest hue, And through the azure fields of air Bring’st down the gentle dew."

"We bring roses, beautiful fresh roses, Dewy as the morning and colored like the dawn."

"Yon deep bark goes Where Traffic blows From lands of sun to lands of snows;— Yon happier one, Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun."

"My soul to-day Is far away Sailing the Vesuvian Bay."

"The reason is: rats leave the sinking ship but we... we... didn't leave, so the ship didn't sink, and that's madness, Lear's song that's Touchstone's forest jest, that's swan of Avon logic."

"For one moment seek a lesser beauty and a lesser grace, but you will find no peace in the end save in her presence."

"I knew all the poets-their poems-when I was quite young. (Who were your favorites?) G.P.: I loved Robinson Jeffers. I loved Auden, I loved H.D."

"We don't have to know, only to be: let go the jumble of worn words, reason and vanity."

"Be indigestible, hard, ungiving. so that, living within, you beget, self-out-of-self, selfless, that pearl-of-great-price."

"Joe Louis was a good Heavyweight, good boxer but he was kind of in the same boat as Marciano, weighing about 190 to 200 lbs."

"I didn't fight this fight for the blacks, the whites or the Spanish, I fought the fight for the people. We're all God's children. I don't see color. I'm not a racist When I look at Gerry Cooney, I just see a man trying to take my head off."

"I achieved something once again, I think we all want to put a mark on life. I dream, and my dreams always come true. I dreamed I was the heavyweight champion of the world. I am the heavyweight champion of the world."

"When you constantly hear people talking about going the distance, going the distance, you can't help but wonder about it. I learned a lesson: next time I will fight my fight without that doubt."

"It wasn't about Larry Holmes, if I would have fought a brother I wouldn't have gotten the money I got. Give me 10 black guys and I make eight dollars. Give me Gerry Cooney and I make $10 million."

"If you want to get technical about it, Rocky couldn't carry my jockstrap."

"Movie actors are just ordinary mixed-up people—with agents."

"Every black guy who was in my cell said he respected nazis and no one else because they presume everyone is tribal and everyone is a racist. They know where they stand with the nazis. They're not going to stab them in the back. They will stab them while looking at them, which is preferable."

"Now I know why women have a hole between their legs. That's where they hide all their problems."

"Place something good in front of me, and I'll smash it to pieces."

"I never wanted an easy life."

"Some would like to pretend that violence is unnatural. Idiots."

"Everybody says I'm a bad kid, so I guess I am."

"Roaches. If you see one of them, there's fifty thousand more where that came from."

"The City of Angels. In all the years I've lived here, I haven't seen one fucking angel."

"If you don't take risks, you're already dead."

"Shit can be used as fertilizer."