Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. – e.e. cummings, Introduction, Poems, 1954

My heaviness comes from the heights. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

[T]he departing world leaves behind… not an heir, but a pregnant widow. – Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, Other Shore

I believe if I should die, and you were to walk near my grave, from the very depths of the earth I would hear your footsteps. – Benito Perez Galdos