Life and Existence

Let me have men about me that are fat;

In a dream you are never eighty.

Ah! the clock is always slow;

And come he slow, or come he fast,

And come he slow, or come he fast,

Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride

Man is a useless passion.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the book in the fire.

‘Change’ is scientific, ‘progress’ is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

There is no wealth but life.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion—all in one.

Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

When I am dead, my dearest,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.