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"Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction."~~Charles R. Magel
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There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of person, there are still a thousand others exactly like you.
~~A. Whitney Brown, (The Big Picture)
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Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. ~~George Eliot**
]]>All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself.
~~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"
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When my cats aren't happy. I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.~~Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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]]>There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live!~~Lin Yutang.
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]]>The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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]]>"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
~~Thomas Jefferson.
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]]>Got no checkbooks, got no banks,
Still I'd like to express my thanks -
I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
~~Irving Berlin, "I Got the Sun in the Morning," 1946
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]]>Have you had a kindness shown?
Pass it on;
'Twas not given for thee alone,
Pass it on;
Let it travel down the years,
Let it wipe another's tears,
'Til in Heaven the deed appears -
Pass it on.
~~Henry Burton, Pass It On
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]]>A Fall SongGolden and red trees
Nod to the soft breeze,
As it whispers, "Winter is near;"
And the brown nuts fall
At the wind's loud call,
For this is the Fall of the year.
Good-by, sweet flowers!
Through bright Summer hours
You have filled our hearts with cheer
We shall miss you so,
And yet you must go,
For this is the Fall of the year.
Now the days grow cold,
As the year grows old,
And the meadows are brown and sere;
Brave robin redbreast
Has gone from his nest,
For this is the Fall of the year.
I do softly pray
At the close of day,
That the little children, so dear,
May as purely grow
As the fleecy snow
That follows the Fall of the year.
~~Ellen Robena Field
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A teacher was giving a lecture on modern inventions.
"Can any of you mention something of importance that did not exist fifty years ago?" she asked.
One bright lad in the front row raised his hand eagerly and said, "Me!"
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SONG: Autumn-time is coming
(sung to the tune of Frere Jacques)
Red leaves falling
Red leaves falling
On the ground
On the ground
Autumn-time is coming
Autumn-time is coming
All around
All around
Orange leaves falling
Orange leaves falling
On the ground
On the ground
Autumn-time is coming
Autumn-time is coming
All around
All around
Brown leaves scattered
Brown leaves scattered
On the ground
On the ground
Autumn-time is now here
Autumn-time is now here
All around
All around
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I Walked a Mile with PleasureI walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me.
~~Robert Browning Hamilton
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]]>Wherefore Wings
by Evaleen Stein
Heigho, sparrow! Reckless of the rain;
When chill the cheerless wind grows,
Chirping might and main!
Is it naught, then, when the rose
Blows again?
Beating, sleeting on your draggled coat!
Surely, 'tis enough to drown
Any happy note
Nestling in that downy brown
Little throat.
Ah me, sparrow! Had I but your power,
Think you in the freezing sleet
I would waste an hour?
--I'd sing my sweetest to a sweet
Orange flower!
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]]>"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
~~e e cumming
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]]>A Child's CalendarNovember
by John Updike
The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.
The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.
And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness---
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]]>Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the things you do. So throw off the bowliness. Sail away from safe harbour. Catch the Trade Winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~~Mark Twain
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]]>There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout
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]]>"Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship. Eating or drinking without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf."
~~Epicurus
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]]>Fog in November, trees have no heads,
Streams only sound, walls suddenly stop
Half-way up hills, the ghost of a man spreads
Dung on dead fields for next year's crop.
I cannot see my hand before my face,
My body does not seem to be my own,
The world becomes a far-off, foreign place,
People are strangers, houses silent, unknown.
~~Leonard Clark, Fog in November
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