Best ever

Ignorance, error, cupidity, and sin
Possess our souls and exercise our flesh;
Habitually we cultivate remorse
As beggars entertain and nurse their lice.

Our sins are stubborn. Onwards when contrite
We overstuff confession with our pains,
And when we're back again in human mire
Vile tears, we think, will wash away our stains.

Thrice-potent Satan in our cursed bed
Lulls us to sleep, our spirit overkissed,
Until the precious metal of our will
Is vaporized -that cunning alchemist!

Who but the Devil pulls our waking-strings?
Abominations lure us to their side;
Each day we take another step to hell,
Descending through the stench, unhorrified.

Like an exhausted rake who mouths and chews
The martyrized breast of an old withered whore
We steal, in passing, whatever joys we can,
Squeezing the driest orange all the more.

Packed in our brains incestuous as worms
Our demons celebrate in drunken gangs,
And when we breathe, that hollow rasp is Death
Sliding invisibly down into our lungs.

If the dull canvas of our wretched life
is unembellished with such pretty ware
As knives or poison, pyromania, rape
It is because our soul's too weak to dare!

But in this den of jackals, monkeys, curs,
Scorpions, buzzards, snakes-this paradise
Of filthy beasts that screech, howl, grovel, grunt -
In this menagerie of mankind's vice

There's one supremely hideous and impure!
Soft-spoken, not the type to cause a scene,
He'd willingly make rubble of the earth
And swallow up creation in a yawn.

I mean Ennui! who in his hookah-dreams
Produces hangmen and real tears together.
How well you know this fastidious monster, reader,
-Hypocrite reader, you- my double! my brother!

Ann Landers (1918 - 2002)

Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it quarely in the eye and say, 'I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.'

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Anais Nin

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Anais Nin (1903 - 1977), The Diary of Anais Nin, volume 3, 1939-1944

Evan Esar

Many a man who falls in love with a dimple make the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

Evan Esar (1899 - 1995), Esar's Comic Dictionary