They both spoke nobly at the end, they kept faith with their vows for each other. They left a great heritage of love, devotion, faith, and courage — … - Katherine Anne Porter

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They both spoke nobly at the end, they kept faith with their vows for each other. They left a great heritage of love, devotion, faith, and courage — all done with the sure intention that holy Anarchy should be glorified through their sacrifice and that the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject. Near the end of their ordeal Vanzetti said that if it had not been for "these thing" he might have lived out his life talking at street corners to scorning men. He might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. "Now, we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph." This is not new — all the history of our world is pocked with it. It is very grand and noble in words and grand, noble souls have died for it — it is worth weeping for. But it doesn't work out so well. In order to annihilate the criminal State, they have become criminals. The State goes on without end in one form or another, built securely on the base of destruction. Nietzsche said: "The State is the coldest of all cold monsters," and the revolutions which destroy or weaken at least one monster bring to birth and growth another.

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About Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter (15 May 1890 – 18 September 1980) was a celebrated American journalist, essayist, short story writer and novelist.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Callie Russell Porter
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Additional quotes by Katherine Anne Porter

I thought you said you’re a painter,” said Denny. “I am. Timekeeping in a mine was the way I made my living, so I could work,” said David. Denny thought this over a while, and then said: “Look, that’s something I can’t understand — you spend time working at something you can’t make a living at, and then you take a job so you can make enough money to go on working at the work you can’t live on — it gets me down,” he said. “And you call yourself a painter, but why aren’t you just as much a timekeeper in a mine? Why can’t you call yourself a timekeeper?” “Because I really am not one,” said David, “I just make my living that way, or did.… Now I’m going to try to make a living painting, but if I can’t, why, I can always get some kind of job, to keep me while I paint.

But I tell you, nothing is pointless, and nothing is meaningless if the artist will face it. And it’s his business to face it. He hasn’t got the right to sidestep it like that. Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist — the only thing he’s good for — is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it’s only his view of a meaning. That’s what he’s for — to give his view of life. Surely, we understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment. But by remembering, comparing, waiting to know the consequences, we can sometimes see what an event really meant, what it was trying to teach us.

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