Lies

Famous quotes containing the word lies:

    Hast ever ben in Omaha
    Where rolls the dark Missouri down,
    Where four strong horses scarce can draw
    An empty wagon through the town?
    Where sand is blown from every mound
    To fill your eyes and ears and throat;
    Where all the steamboats are aground,
    And all the houses are afloat?...
    If not, take heed to what I say,
    You’ll find it just as I have found it;
    And if it lies upon your way
    For God’s sake, reader, go around it!
    —For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    The lies fall like flaxen threads from the skies
    All over America, and the fact that some of them are true of course
    Doesn’t so much not matter as serve to justify
    The whole mad organizing force under the billows of correct delight.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    Here lies a man who was killed by lightning;
    He died when his prospects seemed to be brightening.
    He might have cut a flash in this world of trouble,
    But the flash cut him, and he lies in the stubble.
    Anonymous. From Booth, Epigrams Ancient and Modern (1863)