[T]he food that memory gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it. - H. Rider Haggard

. . . there are always plenty of fools in the world and the fool who comes after is just as big as the fool who went before. Death spills the water of wisdom upon the sand . . . and sand is thirsty stuff that soon grows dry again. If it were not so . . . men would soon stop falling in love with women, and yet even great ones . . . fall in love.

Bethink you, have there not been days, aye and months, in your own life when you would have rejoiced to sleep in mindlessness? And should we not, perchance, be happier, all of us, if like the beasts we could not remember, foreknow and understand? Oh! men talk of Heaven, but believe me, the real Heaven is one of dreamless sleep, since life and wakefulness, however high their scale and on whatever star, mean struggle, which being so oft mistaken, must breed sorrow—or remorse that spoils all.

. . . the devil never dies