You’ll Never Guess Who Wrote This.
Try and guess without Googling. If you know . . . wait. I’ll post the answer later or tomorrow.
We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us while they afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or in doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind of benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes, and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance, and answer none of those intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we get rid of them. Death is that way.
Ambiance 
chickelit said,
January 3, 2011 at 9:46 pm
I don’t know who wrote it and I won’t Google it. But it reminds me of something you once tweeted: link.
Happy New Year BTW!
amba12 said,
January 3, 2011 at 10:21 pm
I said that? Huh.
The copy editor in me sees that it’s ambiguous. Did I mean that we envy entropy, or entropy envies us? (The latter. Is that how you read it?)
amba12 said,
January 3, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Hey, happy new year 2 U 2!
Peter Hoh said,
January 3, 2011 at 10:59 pm
My guess: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
amba12 said,
January 3, 2011 at 11:14 pm
That makes it almost irresistible to reveal who it is; but I’m trying to control myself.
chickelit said,
January 3, 2011 at 11:38 pm
I read the former and hadn’t even considered the latter. That’s an intriguing ambiguity.
kristycasey said,
January 4, 2011 at 12:12 am
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~ he says profound things like that sometimes! :D
I love the guess of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry as well! Can’t wait to find out!
Ron said,
January 4, 2011 at 12:33 am
This sounds like Jefferson? or maybe Franklin? Something about the spiritual side makes me think of Jefferson, but it’s kind of sly…the kind of skirt chasing bs that Franklin would use for a tactical advantage over a French lady of some breeding….
watch, it’s probably William S. Burroughs….
amba12 said,
January 4, 2011 at 12:49 am
Heh.
Ron said,
January 4, 2011 at 1:41 am
Close I guess!
amba12 said,
January 4, 2011 at 9:32 am
Ron gets the prize. (What was the prize again?) I found it surprising that Benjamin Franklin said that. Ron, what biography(s) did you read?
amba12 said,
January 4, 2011 at 9:34 am
She wasn’t French, and he was trying to console her. Whether he was also trying to seduce her we must leave to the historians . . .
Ron said,
January 4, 2011 at 11:23 am
It wasn’t a biography but an article on Franklin’s French diplomatic efforts which read in part like a Penthouse Letter.
Given the level of cynicism back then Franklin trying to seduce by using the word “Death” would be like a modern filmmaker using the “Ferrari” on an up and coming starlet…
I thought the prize was an Ambiently Roasted Beef…with extra AmbiDextrose…and potatoes!
Ron said,
January 4, 2011 at 11:27 am
I also love how when Franklin needed some….Benjamins(!), he’d hack out a book of drink recipes with dirty names…cause it would sell!
We could have a blog today for that purpose!
amba12 said,
January 4, 2011 at 11:31 am
He’d be as quickly at home in today’s world as Mark Twain.
Ron said,
January 4, 2011 at 11:37 am
hmmm….would Twain (born say 100 years earlier) have been a Founding Father? or just not his thing?
Louise M said,
January 4, 2011 at 3:15 pm
“We’re on a scavenger hunt, tracking, searching for arrowheads. When we find them we turn them over and over in the warm expectant tremble of our hands, polishing them with curiosity, rubbing them as if they might be magic lamps. Which they might be.
“‘The first track is the end of a string,” wrote Tom Brown in his book The Tracker. “At the far end a being is moving. A mystery that leaves itself like a trail of bread crumbs, and by the time your mind has eaten its way to the maker of the tracks, the mystery is inside you. ”
from G Levoy, Callings
karen said,
January 5, 2011 at 9:25 am
Louise!!!
I love your library.