Beauty is the only master to serve. - Jack London

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.

But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule — for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times,
with savage usury added.