My advice to you concerning applause is this: enjoy it but never quite believe it

O for a summer noon, when light and breeze Sport on the grass, like ripples o'er a lake Alive with freshness! when the full round Sun, With the Creator's smile upon his face, Walks like a prince of glory through the path Of Heaven! - Thou vast, and ever-glorious sky, Mantling the earth with thy majestic robe.

Oh! now to be alone, on some grand height, Where heaven’s black curtains shadow all the sight, And watch the swollen clouds their bosom clash, While fleet and far the living lightnings flash... And see the fiery arrows fall and rise, In dizzy chase along the rattling skies,— How stirs the spirit while the echoes roll, And God, in thunder, rocks from pole to pole!

Say, care-worn man, Whom Duty chains within the city walls, Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays The fresh wind o’er thy sickly brow, when free To tread the springy turf,— to hear the trees Communing with the gales,—to catch the voice Of waters, gushing from their rocky womb, And singing as they wander... Spring-hours will come again, and feelings rise With dewy freshness o’er thy wither’d heart.

Berlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there's lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can't afford the rent in London and New York, and they're having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now.

And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace, By breezes lull’d, or by the storm-blasts driv’n, Thy majesty uplifts the mind to heaven.

I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox.