Past and Future

There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the Past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. On the left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny.

You start out with one thing, end up with another, and nothing’s like it used to be, not even the future.

Dieu est, ou il n’est pas. Mais de quel côté pencherons-nous? La raison n’y peut rien déterminer. Il y’a un chaos infini qui nous sépare. Il se joue un jeu, à l’extrémité de cette distance infinie, où il arrivera croix ou pile: que gagerez-vous?

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

 

I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men.

 

L’avenir est comme le reste: il n’est plus ce qu’il était .

Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road.

Perhaps my best years are gone … but I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire that’s in me now.

So that, in the end, there was no end.

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks Remind us of everything we have lost, For we have seen on our way and fallen in love With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

I hibernated in my past. 5

It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea Gone with the sun. 11

Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end. J. R. R.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

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.

 

Poor Jim Jay Got stuck fast In Yesterday.

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

For I dipped into the future, as far as human eye could see, saw a vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

I long for Europe of the ancient parapets. 8

Oh, no man knows

Come night, strike hour. Days go, I endure. 4

True is it that we have seen better days.