It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?

We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.

And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.