No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

Books lie, he said. God dont lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things. The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.

They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.

If people knew the story of their lives, how many would then elect to live them?

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments.

Acts have their being in the witness. Without him who can speak of it? In the end one could even say that the act is nothing, the witness all.

What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?