After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?" I felt pleased again. He was now questioning me. "What?" "That No is a better word than Yes," he replied.

still loved but deprived of grace

When money's tight and is hard to get And your horse has also ran, When all you have is a heap of debt A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.

Questions are like the knocks of beggarmen, and should not be minded.

When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.

The dusk was performing its customary intransitive operation of "gathering".