Quote#Death
What good, what use, what aim?
Quote byJames Thomson · 1834–1882
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: From a letter dated 19 October 1879, quoted by Bertram Dobell in The Laureate of Pessimism: A Sketch of the Life, and Character of James Thomson ("BV"); Author of the City of Dreadful Night (1910), p. 38.
English (original)
What good, what use, what aim? What compensation for the throes of birth And death in all its frame? What conscious life hath ever paid its cost? From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!
— James Thomson
More from James Thomson
The wine of Love is music, And the feast of Love is song: And when Love sits down to the banquet, Love sits long:Sits long and rises drunken, But not with the feast and the wine; He reeleth with his own heart,
Give a man a horse he can ride, Give a man a boat he can sail; And his rank and wealth, his strength and health, On sea nor shore shall fail.
We will rush ever on without fear; Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet! For we carry the Heavens with us, dear, While the Earth slips from our feet!
Give a man a girl he can love, As I, O my love, love thee; And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate, At home, on land, on sea.
As we rush, as we rush in the train, The trees and the houses go wheeling back, But the starry heavens above that plain Come flying on our track.
Yet why evoke the spectres of black night To blot the sunshine of exultant years?