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It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun and pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men: but prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.
-Joyce Kilmer
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It Is Stern Work, It Is Perilous

Joyce Kilmer
It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun and pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men: but prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.
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Heart Men Fire

More From Joyce Kilmer

Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. every smoker is an embodiment of prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. we smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. it’s not the tobacco we’re after but the fire. when we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.
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To business."tux dude extended his hand. "i am prometheus." i was too surprised to shake."the fire-stealer guy?the chained-to-the-rock-with-the-vultures guy?" prometheus winced. he touched the scratches on his face."please, don't mention the vultures. but yes, i stole fire from the gods and gave it to your ancestors. in return, the ever merciful zeus had me chained to a rock and tortured for all eternity.
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What have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me? what have they done to me?
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A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. the spark is god, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. the spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. it must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. anything can be a shell, reuven. anything. indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. yes, even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark.
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You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. but as thomas more used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. you tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.
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Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. rome'll decline and fall again, cortés'll lay tenochtitlán to waste again, and later, ewing will sail again, adrian'll be blown to pieces again, you and i'll sleep under the corsican stars again, i'll come to bruges again, fall in and out of love with eva again, you'll read this letter again, the sun'll grow cold again. nietzsche's gramophone record. when it ends, the old one plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.
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To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. we have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of god.
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Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old tennessee williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. what i’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. for us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.
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The dead are like the stars by day; withdrawn from mortal eye, but not extinct, they hold their way in glory through the sky.
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Creation is all things and us. it is us in relationship with all things. all things, the ones we see and the ones we do not; the whirling galaxies and the wild suns, the black holes and the microorganisms, the trees and the stars, the fish and the whales - the molten lava and the towering snow-capped mountains, the children we give birth to and their children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs.
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