She couldn't see that, though, because the haze out at sea erased the ship long before it could beyond the horizon, drawing after it the other ships.… - John Crowley

This was the problem: if what had to be discovered lay in the what-was-to-be, then they could discover that easily enough. It was what-had-been that was hard to keep in mind. That's the way it is for beings who are immortal or nearly so; they know the future, but the past is dark to them; beyond the present year is the door into aeons-ago.

Serenity. Now you could wish for that, naming no conditions: a permanent inner vacation, escape made good. To somehow have this motionlessness that he drew in with the sweet air he inhaled for his inward weather always.

But there were problems too with wishing for moral qualities, serenity, large-mindedness. The interdiction (which Pierce thought obvious) against wishing for such things as artistic abilities — sit down at the piano, the Appassionata flows suddenly from your fingertips — applied in a way to wisdom too, to enlightenment, to heart-knowledge, useless unless earned, the earning of it being no doubt all that it consisted of.

The immense laughter of Bruno when he understood that Copernicus had inverted the universe — what was it but joy in the confirmation of his knowledge that Mind, in the center of all, contains within it all that it is the center of? … the Universe exploded into infinitude, a circle of which Mind, the center, was everywhere and the circumference nowhere. The trick-mirror of finitude was smashed, Bruno laughed, the starry realms were a jewelled bracelet in the hand.