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Quote by Michael Bassey Johnson

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The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

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Michael Bassey Johnson

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“I say to life, "You are very hard", and I also say: "We are blind, we prefer to be blind. It is easier...". Life has to be hard to have any affect on us; even now we hardly notice it. Beyond that can one go? I must. I add, "We are also blind to the miracles of good that come to us. We hardly heed them, we even protest against them". Then I am left where I was, appalled by the hardness of life, knowing we are forced to be unwilling heroes. Suddenly I wonder--is all hardness justified because we are so slow in realizing that life was meant to be heroic? Greatness is required of us. That is life's aim and justification, and we poor fools have for centuries been trying to make it convenient, manageable, pliant to our will. It is also peaceful and tender and funny and dull. Yes, all that.”

“I admire a contented mind. I revere enjoyment of the simple things. I can imagine that contentment has a high degree of truth. But the human tendency is to take good as normal, and one's natural right, and so no cause for satisfaction and pleasure. This is accompanied by the habit of regarding bad as abnormal and a personal outrage.”

“And I sat there at the patio, while the whole of universe, was getting engulfed, in the whitest whiteness of snow. Down, near my rough paw, is soft snow, mannering a fidgeting embryo. I monitored the snow that plunged, on the soil of my backyard, and realized it melting fast. Was that the temperature or, my eyes on it overcast? While I think of this melted exalt, I am obliged to ask, What ought happens to the thoughts? Where do they get tossed? When they are forgot? Scorched? Scoffed? Deformed? Unadorned?”