Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it. There is the forgetfulness and the… - R. A. Lafferty

I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.

Ch. 5 : Muerte De Boscaje

Stilicho first talked of himself; and then of the Empire, which was an extension of himself. He gave it as his studied and honest opinion that he was the best horseman in the world, the best archer and targeteer, the best lancer, and that he had been the best swordsman; one cannot remain the best with the sword without spending six to eight hours a day in the practice of it. Stilicho attested that he was the greatest foot soldier alive, being able to cover afoot seventy Roman miles over rough country between midnight and midnight under the full weight of arms and provisions — about a hundred pounds in modern weight. Stilicho could endure hunger and thirst and privation beyond all others; he could plan and project more than could another man; he could hold every detail of a countryside in his head, and could recall the underfoot stones of a night path a dozen years later. He could see the pattern of affairs and the pattern behind the pattern.
Stilicho spoke of himself without vainglory, and certainly without modesty. He acknowledged that it was unusual for one man so to excel in everything; but was happy that that one person should be such a responsible person as himself. He gave the opinion that even in himself it would be a short-term affair. Soon his hand and his mind would weaken a little, and soon another man — probably one of them — would move into his place. A dozen years, he told them, is an extreme limit of the time in which a man may serve faultlessly