Eric Rücker Eddison

"The harvest of this world is to the resolute, and he that is infirm of purpose is ground betwixt the upper and the nether millstone."

"Thou art nothing. And all thy desires and memories and loves and dreams, nothing. The little dead earth-louse were of greater avail than thou, were it not nothing as thou art nothing. For all is nothing: earth and sky and sea and they that dwell therein. Nor shall this illusion comfort thee, if it might, that when thou art abolished these things shall endure for a season, stars and months return, and men grow old and die, and new men and women live and love and die and be forgotten. For what is it to thee, that shalt be as a blown-out flame? and all things in earth and heaven, and things past and things for to come, and life and death, and the mere elements of space and time, of being and not being, all shall be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be nothing, for ever."

"And the Lord Juss cried aloud in his agony, "Fling me to Tartarus, deliver me to the black infernal Furies, let them blind me, seethe me in the burning lake. For so should there yet be hope. But in this horror of Nothing is neither hope nor life nor death nor sleep nor waking, for ever. For ever."

"Your great Italian clock measures the silence with its ticking: Another, gone! another, gone! another, gone! Commonly, I have grown to hate such tickings, hideous to an old man as the grinning memento mori at the feast. But now, (perhaps the shock has deadened my feelings), I could almost cheat reason to believe there was in very truth eternity in these things: substance and everlasting life in what is more transient and unsubstantial than a mayfly, empirical, vainer than air, weak bubbles on the flux."

"I heard her say, faint as the breath of night-flowers among the stars: The fabled land of ZIMIAMVIA. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors? Who knows? I said. Who dares say he knows?"

"[Heming and Cargo, two sons of Corund, have conspired with Gro to rescue Mevrian. Mevrian is wearing Cargos armor.] But Corinius his eye lighting on them stopped and hailed them, catching them each by an arm, and crying, "Heming, thourt drunk! Cargo, thourt drunk, sweet youth! Tis a damnable folly, drink as drunk as you be, and these bonny wenches Ive provided you. How shall I satisfy em, think ye, when they come to me with their plaints to-morn, that each must sit with a snoring drunkards head in her lap the night long?" Mevrian, as if she had all her part by rote, was leaned this while heavily upon Heming, hanging her head. Heming could think on nought likelier to say, than, "Truly, O Corinius, we be sober." "Thou liest," said Corinius. "Twas ever sign manifest of drunkenness to deny it. Look you, my lords, I deny not I am drunk. Therefore is sign manifest I am drunk, I mean, sign manifest I am sober. But the hour calleth to other work than questioning of these high matters. Set on!"

"I will give your ladyship the answer I gave before, said that old man, who had sat motionless, serene and undisturbed, darting his bright and eager glance from painter to sitter and to painter again, and smiling as if with the aftertaste of ancient wine. You do marvel that his grace will still consume himself with striving to fix in art, in a seeming changelessness, those self-same appearances which in nature he prizeth by reason of their very mutability and subjection to change and death. Herein your ladyship, grounding yourself first unassailably upon most predicamental and categoric arguments in celarent, next propounded to me a syllogism in barbara, the major premiss whereof, being well and exactly seen, surveyed, overlooked, reviewed and recognized, was by my demonstrations at large convicted in fallacy of simple conversion and not per accidens; whereupon, countering in brahmantip, I did in conclusion confute you in bokardo, showing, in brief, that here there is no marvel; since tis womens minds alone are ruled by clear reason: mens are fickle and elusive as the jack-o-lanterns they pursue. A very complete and metaphysical answer, said she. Seeing tis given on my side, Ill let it stand without question; though (to be honest) I cannot tell what the dickens it means. To be honest, madam, said the Duke, I paint because I cannot help it."