Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow.
They do not abuse the king that flatter him. For flattery is the bellows blows up sin; The thing the which is flattered, but a spark To which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing.
Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.
Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you When you think everything's okay and everything's going right And life has a funny way of helping you out when You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up In your face
Poles offer a mobility like that of the wind that blows over the immense plains and marches of Poland. Show a Pole a precipice, and he will leap headlong over it.
I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.
Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge Driven by invisible blows, The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.