Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . W… - John Fowles

A tiny wren perched on top of a bramble not ten feet from him and trilled its violent song. He saw its glittering black eyes, the red and yellow of its song-gaped throat — a midget ball of feathers that yet managed to make itself the Announcing Angel of evolution: I am that I am, thou shalt not pass my being now. He stood as Pisanello's saint stood, astonished perhaps more at his own astonishment at this world's existing so close, so within reach of all that suffocating banality of ordinary day. In those few moments of defiant song, any ordinary hour or place — and therefore the vast infinity of all Charles's previous hours and places — seemed vulgarized, coarsened, made garish. The appallimg ennui of human reality lay cleft to the core; and the heart of all life pulsed there in the wren's triumphant throat.

That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.

No doubt our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.