Streets of Paris, pray for me; beaches in the sun, pray for me; ghosts of the lemurs, intercede for me; plane-tree and laurel-rose, shade me; summer … - Cyril Connolly

Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.
Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

There was once a man (reputed to be the wisest in the world) who, although living to an untold age, confined his teaching to the one word of advice: ‘Endure!’ At length a rival arose and challenged him to a debate which took place before a large assembly. ‘You say “Endure”,’ cried the rival sage, ‘but I don’t
want to endure. I wish to love and to be loved, to conquer and create, I wish to know what is right, then do it and be happy.’ There was no reply from his opponent, and, on looking more closely at the old creature, his adversary found him to consist
of an odd-shaped rock on which had taken root a battered thorn that presented, by an optical illusion, the impression of hair and a beard. Trimnphantly he pointed out the mistake to the authorities, but they were not concerned. ‘Man or rock,’ they answered, ‘what does it matter?’ And at that moment the wind,
reverberating through the sage’s moss-grown orifice, repeated with a hollow sound: ‘Endure!

The refractory pupil of Socrates, Aristippus the Cyrene, who believed happiness to be the sum of particular pleasures and golden moments and not, as Epicurus, a prolonged intermediary state between ecstasy and pain.