Life and Existence

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

 

In Memoriam.

 

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

 

For my purpose holds

 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

 

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

 

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink

 

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

 

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

 

While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

 

Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead

 

Since Life is but a Dream,

 

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying.

 

Either this man [Jesus] was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

 

Have you built your ship of death, O have you?

 

And if tonight my soul may find her peace

 

Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass

 

To arrive at the truth in all things, we ought always to be ready to believe that what seems to us white is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it.

 

Life seems to me like a Japanese picture which our imagination does not allow to end with the margin. We aim at the infinite and when our arrow falls to earth it is in flames.

 

Life seems to me like a Japanese picture which our imagination does not allow to end with the margin. We aim at the infinite and when our arrow falls to earth it is in flames.

 

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one’s self: “The work is done.” But just as one says that, the answer comes: “The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.” The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be, while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.

 

I do not think we need trouble ourselves with the thought that my view depends upon differences of degree. The whole law does so as soon as it is civilized. . . . Negligence is all degree—that of the defendant here degree of the nicest sort; and between the variations according to distance that I suppose to exist and the simple universality of the rules in the Twelve Tables of the Leges Barbarorum, there lies the culture of two thousand years.

 

The law, wherein, as in a magic mirror, we see reflected, not only our own lives, but the lives of all men that have been!