La fanciulla del West

Minnie, dalla mia casa son partito
Che è là dai monti, sopra un altro mare:

Non un rimpianto, Minnie, m’ha seguito,
Non un rimpianto vi potea lasciare!
Nessuno mai m’amò, Nessuno ho amato,
Nessuna cosa mai mi diè piacere!
Chiudo nel petto un cuor di biscazziere,
Amaro, avvelenato, Che ride dell’amore e del destino:

Mi son messo in cammino
Attratto sol dal fascino dell’oro
È questo il solo che non m’ha ingannato
Or per un bacio tuo getto un tesoro!

Minnie, dalla mia casa son partito
Giacomo Puccini

“Never tell your problems to anyone,” the legendary football coach Lou Holtz said. “Twenty percent don’t care, and the other 80 percent are glad you have them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/fashion/the-microcomplaintnothing-too-small-to-whine-about.html

Two or three great ideas

Strange, but true, that the principal factor in cohering the nations, eras and paradoxes of the globe, by giving them a common platform of two or three great ideas, a commonalty of origin, and projecting kosmic brotherhood, the dream of all hope, all time—that the long trains gestations, attempts and failures, resulting in the New World, and in modern solidarity and politics—are to be identified and resolv'd back into a collection of old poetic lore, which, more than any one thing else, has been the axis of civilization and history through thousands of years—and except for which this America of ours, with its polity and essentials, could not now be existing.

Walt Whitman
The Bible as poetry