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Where, where are now the great reports
Of those huge haugthy earth-born giants?
Where are the lofty tow’rs and forts
Of those proud kings bade Heav’n defiance?
When them I to my mind revoke,
Methinks I see a mighty smoke
Thick mounting from quick-burning matter
Which in an instant winds do scatter.
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
James Baldwin | The Fire Next Time
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