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youth and age touch only the surface of our lives
isn't seeing believing?
it may be - for children or beasts.
the sadness that came over him had novelty in it
her actual state of mind was one she could not analyze. her expectation was strung up to the height; something that would have been terror but for the joy, and joy but for the terror, possessed her - an all-absorbing tension of excitement and obedience. everything else in her life seemed small and commonplace compared with this moment.
...that when you mean well, he always takes you to have meant better than you knew. it will not be enough for always. he is very jealous. he will have you for no one but himself in the end. but for tonight, it is enough.
[one] who could enjoy things for their own sake
have you ever noticed, said dimble, that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?. . .you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room or indecision and choices are even more momentous. good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse.
i'm afraid there's no niche in the world for people that won't be either pagan or christian. just imagine a man who was too dainty to eat with his fingers and yet wouldn't use forks!
now the suspicion dawn upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent.
in its light you could understand them; but from them you could know nothing of it. there was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. and now there was nothing except this. yet also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed.
words take too long. to be aware of all this and to know that it had already gone made one single experience.
it was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry. the doubling, spilitting, and recombining of thoughts which now went on in them would have been unendurable for one whom that art had not already instructed in the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision.
they could not bear that it continue. they could not bear that it should cease.
they were laughing again, but it was a different kind of laughter. their love for one another became intense. each, looking on all the rest, thought, i'm lucky to be here. i could die with these.
they felt themselves taking their places in the ordered rhythm of the universe, side by side with punctual seasons and patterned atoms. . .under the immense weight of their obedience their wills stood up straight and untiring like caryatids.
it was also strong like a mountain; its age was no mere morass of time where imagination can sink in reverie, but a living, self-remembering duration which repelled lighter intelligences from its structure as granite flings back waves, itself unwithered and undecayed but able to wither any who approach it unadvised.
before the other angels a man might sink: before this he might die, but if he lived at all, he would laugh. . .unquenchable laughter
it was like the first beginning of music in the halls of some king so high and at some festival so solemn that a tremor akin to fear runs through young hears when they hear it
but the realisation that he had forgotten trouble him more than it would have troubled another. it was like the first cold breath of winter - the first little hint of a crack in that great seconday self or mental machine which he had built up to carry on the business of living
nothing but nonsense syllables would occur to his mind
if i take a step in any direction, he thought, i may step over a precipice
christianity was a fable. it would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. this man himself [christ], on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the god in whom he trusted had forsaken him - had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. but this raised a question that mark had never thought of before. was that the moment at which to turn against the man? if the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? supposing the straight and normal was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the crooked, what then? why not go down with the ship? he began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. they had been a safeguard . . .they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making.
this, combined with an inarticulate want for the human companionship to which he was accustomed, gradually plunged him into depression. sorrow such as only animals know - huge seas of disconsolate emotion with not one little raft of reason to float on - drowned him fathoms deep. in his own fashion he lifted up his voice and wept.
often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. but he cannot make this knowledge real to himself.
increasingly, his actions had been without motive. he did this and that, he said thus and thus, and did know why. his mind was a mere spectator. he could not understand why that spectator should exist at all.
he half saw: he wholly hated.
as he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.
but now that it's so very nearly time for me to go, all this begins to feel like a dream. a happy dream, you understand: all of it, even the pain. i want to taste every drop. i feel as though it would be dissolved if i talked much.
isn't seeing believing?
it may be - for children or beasts.
the sadness that came over him had novelty in it
her actual state of mind was one she could not analyze. her expectation was strung up to the height; something that would have been terror but for the joy, and joy but for the terror, possessed her - an all-absorbing tension of excitement and obedience. everything else in her life seemed small and commonplace compared with this moment.
...that when you mean well, he always takes you to have meant better than you knew. it will not be enough for always. he is very jealous. he will have you for no one but himself in the end. but for tonight, it is enough.
[one] who could enjoy things for their own sake
have you ever noticed, said dimble, that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?. . .you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room or indecision and choices are even more momentous. good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse.
i'm afraid there's no niche in the world for people that won't be either pagan or christian. just imagine a man who was too dainty to eat with his fingers and yet wouldn't use forks!
now the suspicion dawn upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent.
in its light you could understand them; but from them you could know nothing of it. there was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. and now there was nothing except this. yet also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed.
words take too long. to be aware of all this and to know that it had already gone made one single experience.
it was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry. the doubling, spilitting, and recombining of thoughts which now went on in them would have been unendurable for one whom that art had not already instructed in the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision.
they could not bear that it continue. they could not bear that it should cease.
they were laughing again, but it was a different kind of laughter. their love for one another became intense. each, looking on all the rest, thought, i'm lucky to be here. i could die with these.
they felt themselves taking their places in the ordered rhythm of the universe, side by side with punctual seasons and patterned atoms. . .under the immense weight of their obedience their wills stood up straight and untiring like caryatids.
it was also strong like a mountain; its age was no mere morass of time where imagination can sink in reverie, but a living, self-remembering duration which repelled lighter intelligences from its structure as granite flings back waves, itself unwithered and undecayed but able to wither any who approach it unadvised.
before the other angels a man might sink: before this he might die, but if he lived at all, he would laugh. . .unquenchable laughter
it was like the first beginning of music in the halls of some king so high and at some festival so solemn that a tremor akin to fear runs through young hears when they hear it
but the realisation that he had forgotten trouble him more than it would have troubled another. it was like the first cold breath of winter - the first little hint of a crack in that great seconday self or mental machine which he had built up to carry on the business of living
nothing but nonsense syllables would occur to his mind
if i take a step in any direction, he thought, i may step over a precipice
christianity was a fable. it would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. this man himself [christ], on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the god in whom he trusted had forsaken him - had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. but this raised a question that mark had never thought of before. was that the moment at which to turn against the man? if the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? supposing the straight and normal was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the crooked, what then? why not go down with the ship? he began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. they had been a safeguard . . .they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making.
this, combined with an inarticulate want for the human companionship to which he was accustomed, gradually plunged him into depression. sorrow such as only animals know - huge seas of disconsolate emotion with not one little raft of reason to float on - drowned him fathoms deep. in his own fashion he lifted up his voice and wept.
often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. but he cannot make this knowledge real to himself.
increasingly, his actions had been without motive. he did this and that, he said thus and thus, and did know why. his mind was a mere spectator. he could not understand why that spectator should exist at all.
he half saw: he wholly hated.
as he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.
but now that it's so very nearly time for me to go, all this begins to feel like a dream. a happy dream, you understand: all of it, even the pain. i want to taste every drop. i feel as though it would be dissolved if i talked much.
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