“How nearly is human cunning allied to folly! The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning, know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning, he blunders and betrays.”
-Thomas Paine

It is the cunning that will, without a second thought, betray a human trust, a common decency, the truth. A forthright man might at times be considered a knave or a fool, falling prey to the deceitful and cunning.

But as each one draws their last breath, the forthright will have nothing to hide from his God, and go to his rest knowing that if there is to be a heaven, he will find it.

The cunning will struggle for one more breath, one more chance to deceive what, to his horror, he knows finally, in his heart, cannot be deceived.

As the darkness descends, he will wish for the life of the forthright. But it is too late. The predator at last becomes the prey as eternal death overtakes the deceiver.

“When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity.”
-Thomas Paine

Every age has their class of men that presume wisdom and authority for which they do not possess and for which they are not worthy.

Even, unfortunately, those in the highest reaches of human society.

“We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal. The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their magnitude, find no way out — and, in the struggle of expression, every finger tries to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems too little for the mind, and we look about for helps to show our thoughts by.”
-Thomas Paine

It is a Beethoven symphony or a Van Gogh painting; a rain-soaked forest or the star-choked heavens hurtling toward forever on a clear summer night. 

People will write tomes on the symphonies of Beethoven and the tortured artistry of Van Gogh; they will wax poetic of the wonders of nature and the connectedness it engenders.

But words are not the music, the painting, nor the poetry of nature. There is beauty in words, but it is not beauty itself; nor is music, painting, or even nature. It is the window through which we might find a glimpse.  

The true expression of beauty is always just a little beyond our firm grasp, but in our speechless awe we feel the chill up the spine, the hair standing on end, feeling the power of it; expressed simply by being.