Tag Archive: Bob Dylan

The Wicked Messenger

20 Nov 2007 / PE

He stayed behind the assembly hall,
It was there he made his bed,
Oftentimes he could be seen returning.
Until one day he just appeared
With a note in his hand which read,
“The soles of my feet, I swear they’re burning.”

Oh, the leaves began to fallin’
And the seas began to part,
And the people that confronted him were many.
And he was told but these few words,
Which opened up his heart,
“If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.”

— Bob Dylan, “The Wicked Messenger”

Useless and Pointless Knowledge

15 Sep 2002 / Hostile Witness

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge.

— Bob Dylan, “Tombstone Blues”
 

“I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while–just once in a while–there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!”

— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
 

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

— T.S. Eliot, “The Rock”

Ironic Twist of the Year Award

10 Aug 2002 / Hostile Witness
Woman with squirt gun

Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die . . .

— Bob Dylan, “Gates of Eden”

According to Slate, if NRA president Charlton Heston does in fact develop full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, California state law would compel him to surrender his firearms.

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