Robert Louis Stevenson
- Letter to Edmund Gosse, 1886 January 2nd
Yes, if I could believe in the immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honor and not for hire; the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion of reality. The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of reward.
Leo Rosten
- Quotes
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
Wislawa Szymborska
- Life
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice... No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses.
