The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss.

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last?

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as ou…

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous?

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtu…