Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.

A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.

And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.

Existence is not itself a good thing, that we should spend a lifetime securing its necessaries: a life spent, however victoriously, in securing the necessaries of life is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come. Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.

I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.