Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary.

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived And What I Lived For (Penguin Books, 2005) p. 77

Our life is frittered away by detail

Our life is frittered away by detail.

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived And What I Lived For (Penguin Books, 2005) p. 69

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived And What I Lived For (Penguin Books, 2005) p. 59

A miracle which is taking place every instant

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived And What I Lived For (Penguin Books, 2005) p. 10

It is never too late to give up on our prejudices

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up on our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilising rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived And What I Lived For (Penguin Books, 2005) p. 7

They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful

They quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It’s all simply a matter of degree. An Earth Man thinks: ‘In that picture, color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material to reflect light. Therefore, color is not really an actual part of things I happen to see.’ A Martian, far cleverer, would say: ‘This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and the mind of a man inspired. Its idea and its color are from life. This thing is good.

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (HarperCollins, 1995) p. 109

The spirit of things

I believe in the things that were done, and there are evidences of many things done on Mars. There are streets and houses, and there are books, I imagine, and big canals and clocks and places for stabling, if not horses, well, then some domestic animal, perhaps with twelve legs, who knows? Everywhere I look I see things that were used. They were touched and handled for centuries.

Ask me, then, if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I’ll say yes. They’re all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we’ll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us; we’ll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we’ll give to the canals and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we’ll never touch it. And then we’ll get mad at it, and you know what we’ll do? We’ll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves.

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (HarperCollins, 1995) p. 9x

The probability of the actual is absolute

You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise have been is senseless for there is no otherwise. Of what could it be made? Where be hid? Or how make its appearance? The probability of the actual is absolute. That we have no power to guess it beforehand makes it no less certain. That we may imagine alternate histories means nothing at all.

[...]

Our decision do not have some alternative. We may contemplate a choice but we pursue one path only. The low of the world is composed of its entires, but it cannot be divided back into them. And at some point this log must outdistance any possible description of it and this I believe is what the dreamer saw. For as the power to speak of the world recedes from us so also must the story of the world lose its thread and therefore its authority. The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (Picador, 2011) pp. 287-288

Life vanishes at its own appearance

But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way to show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet it is all we have.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (Picador, 2011) pp. 274-275

Choice is lost in the maze of generations

Love makes men foolish. I speak as a victim myself. We are taken out of our own care and it then remains to be seen only if fate will show to us some share of mercy. Or little. Or none.

Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast and endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in that maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life. [...] Our plans are predicated upon a future unknown to us. The world takes its form hourly by a weighing of things at hand, and while we may seek to puzzle out that form we have no way to do so.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (Picador, 2011) pp. 196-197

Beauty and loss are one

A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the church bells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (Picador, 2011) p. 72

The dictates of conscience

'The forehead declares, "Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience."

'Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have formed my plans – right plans I deem them – and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one drug of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution – such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight – to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood – no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet – The will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Penguin Books, 1971) p. 230

The very rich are a poor bunch of bastards

Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight – the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards. He wondered if that were true. They acted that way sometimes.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Books, 2000) p. 704

Maybe a specialist is only a coward

"Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn't be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well."
"Yes," Lee said from the doorway, "and he deplores it. He hated it."
"Did he now?" Adam asked.
[...]
"Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small," said Lee. "Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they're becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses – the whole world over his fence."
"We're only talking about making a living."
"A living – or money," Lee said excitedly. "Money's easy to make if it's money you want. But with few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration."
"All right. But do you have any objection to college? That's what we're talking about."
"I'm sorry," said Lee. "You're right, I do seem to get too excited. No, if college is where a man can go to find his relation to his whole world, I don't object. Is it that?"

John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Books, 2000) pp. 652-653

Most of our vices are attempted short cuts to love

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Books, 2000) p. 505