Once Quotes (page 137)
Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but no longer. What little remains is no more than the wisp of smoke that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out, and even that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone. The dragons are no more, the giants are dead, the children of the forest forgotten with all their lore.
George R. R. Martin
How empty life is and without meaning. - We bury a man, we follow him to the grave, we throw three spades of earth on him, we ride out in a coach, we ride home in a coach, we take comfort in the thought that a long life awaits us. But how long is threescore years and ten? Why not finish it at once?
Soren Kierkegaard
Dor came from a time before the written word, a time
when if you wished to speak with someone, you walked to see them. This time was different. The tools of
this era—phones, computers—enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they
accomplished, they were never at peace. They constantly checked their devices to see what time it was—
the very thing Dor had tried to determine once with a stick, a stone, and a shadow.
Mitch Albom
Thingschanging, failing apart, fading, another year, a few moremoves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom somonumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made bypeople you don't even know that it requires you to lose anysense of reality you might have once acquired, expectationsso unreasonable you become superstitious about evermatching them.
Bret Easton Ellis
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,
And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
onian music measuring out
The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance--
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know—but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come—I didn't know."
"You can't help yourself now. You must come."
"I don't want to help myself."
"Come then."
He did come. He flung down all the barriers—not at once, for he did...
E. M. Forster