If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone."

Moral Epistles 1.1

Persuade yourself that the matter stands as I write: some time is stolen from us, some is drawn off, and some just flows away. The most shameful loss, though, is the one which occurs through negligence. If you wish to take note, you will see that a large part of life slips away from those who act badly, the greatest portion slips away from those who do nothing, and all of life slips away from those who are busy doing something else. What person can you cite who places a price upon his time, who takes an account of the day, who understands that he is dying every day? We are deceived in this, that we look forward to death: a large part of it has already gone by, and whatever part of our lives is in the past is death’s property now. Therefore, act as you claim to do, and embrace every hour; thus it will happen that you weigh out less of tomorrow, if you throw your hand upon today. Life runs away when it is delayed. All things, my Lucilius, are foreign to us: time alone is ours. Nature has granted us the possession of this one fleeting, slippery thing, from which she expels whoever wishes it. The stupidity of humans is so great that they allow the smallest, most worthless things (certainly, those which can be retrieved) to be added to their account when they have accomplished them, but no one thinks that he owes any debt when he receives time, though this is the one thing which no one is able to pay back readily.

The Devil's Notebook

Summertime and the living is lousy. I hate summer. And I'm not alone. Summertime in urban areas is riot-time, tourist-time, pollution-time and psycho-time. In rural areas it's mosquito-time, sunburn/heatstroke -time, pollen-time, litter-time, boredom-time, vandal-time, and gangbang-time. There's no worse time for tragedy than the sticky heat of summer, or for frantic attempts at pleasure. Christmas "joy" in an odious duty, but summer "gaiety" is a maladroit ritual performed with calculated chaos. Persons or refinement prefer the other seasons, which progress through their days less heavy-footedly. Despite nature's tantrums during other seasons, be they storms, floods, ice or snow— man has made summer his personal disaster season. Taking the warmth nature has provided, he has fashioned for himself an environment where his mindlessness flourishes most. It is the only season which validates slobs. Those who have found civilized behavior repugnant the rest of the year can celebrate their boorishness in grand style. I would enjoy spring more were it not for the impending plague of summer with its human locusts thriving in an atmosphere far deadlier (if radiation levels are considered) than the worst blizzards. Other seasons may be violent in themselves, but summer is virulent, an incubator for personal malaise and discord. I like autumn and winter best. A sunny autumn day has a relaxed purity, a mellow tranquility. As with the ancients, my autumn runs from August through October, and winter, from November to February. My favorite aspect of summer is that on the Solstice the days finally grow shorter and the nights longer. The best thing about any day is its gentle lapse into night, the dark mantle whence all secrets evolve. Winter time is hell for many, and understandably. It's a Tartarus that causes havoc. But within a snug harbor, winter can be the great season of contrast. In my noir world, the sticky glare of summer has no place, save for those parts of the world where nature has cheated humankind by injecting regional and regular fog and rain.

We shall flee rest, we shall flee sleep,
We shall outstrip dawn and spring
And we shall fashion days and seasons
To the measure of our dreams.

Argument

Days that cannot bring you near
or will not,
Distance trying to appear
something more than obstinate,
argue argue argue with me
endlessly
neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.

Distance: Remember all that land
beneath the plane;
that coastline
of dim beaches deep in sand
stretching indistinguishably
all the way,
all the way to where my reasons end?

Days: And think
of all those cluttered instruments,
one to a fact,
canceling each other’s experience;
how they were
like some hideous calendar
“Compliments of Never & Forever, Inc.”

The intimidating sound
of these voices
we must separately find
can and shall be vanquished:
Days and Distance disarrayed again
and gone
both for good and from the gentle battleground.

Astragal

The road is as bare and harsh as a desert: later, perhaps, calmly, we'll start down magic pathways...From now until then there is still a great deal of pain, a great many people and things to annihilate: thread by thread I unravel, I destroy; I hate myself for making a "project" out of Julien, but I sense too many false and sticky attachments around him, these at least I would like to break off.

I used to be pampered, petted, fussed over, too, in the old days: I was intact and able to bite, my cupboard was full and my claws were ingenious.

My equipment was destroyed, I am wounded and begging, and it's I now who offers herself and clings; people don't hold onto me at all, for I have nothing to give them but myself, myself naked, and it will take a lot of time and tenderness before some resource, some source springs up in me.

Chapter 133: The Chase - First Day

Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold- I shiver!

This Is Life

My heart wonders incessantly
If this is life, what is it that they call death?
Love was a dream?
Ask not about the fate of this dream?
Ask not about the punishment
I received for the crime of loyalty.

The Last of the Romans

On 8 October 1912, during the First Balkan War, Lemnos became part of Greece. The Greek navy under Rear Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis took it over without any casualties from the occupying Turkish Ottoman garrison, who were returned to Anatolia. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908 and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University recounts when the island was occupied and Greek soldiers were sent to the villages and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of them asked. ‘‘At Hellenes,’’ the children replied. ‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ a soldier retorted. ‘‘No, we are Romans."

(source)

Little Gidding

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Ruth 1:19-21

19 So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi?

20 And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.

21 I went out full and the Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?

All together, they have more death than we, but all together, we have more life than they.

Portraits

What I did not know when I was very young was that nothing can take the past away: the past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

Robinson Jeffers

There is something within us knows our fates from the first, our ends from the very fountain; and we in our nights may overhear its knowledge by accident, all to no purpose.

St. Isaac the Syrian

If you cannot be merciful, at least speak as though you are a sinner. If you are not a peacemaker, at least do not be a troublemaker. If you cannot be assiduous, at least in your thought be like a sluggard. If you are not victorious, do not exalt yourself over the vanquished. If you cannot close the mouth of a man who disparages his companion, at least refrain from joining him in this.

The Grapes of Wrath

The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s a monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

The Baron in the Trees

This gesture of moving the branch as if waiting for another land to appear, this plunging of his gaze deeper and deeper into the undulating distance as if hoping never to see the horizon, but to succeed, perhaps, in making out some place, alas, far too far away — this was the first real sign of exile…

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

The Unnameable

[T]hat’s what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two…

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

The Martian Chronicles

What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing.”

Chapter 38, Dusk

But my whole clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.

Chapter 114, The Gilder

Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.