two quotations to ponder

Here are a couple of thoughts, rather unlike one another, but each worth thinking about, perhaps the first more worth it than the second, so many blowhard politicos today busy lecturing the lower classes on the need to "take some responsibility for their lives." Please.

-->

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. 

                                                                       –Herman Melville

Poetry is completely divided between the desire for the country that does not exist and the need for common ground: between elsewhere and cliché; its two contradictory genies.

                                                                      –Paul Valéry