Dustin

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?”

<...>

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”
― T. S. Eliot Four Quartets

“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“It is not power that builds empires, that asserts order on the stars.
It is vision. Vision and the heroic will to act.
Where there is that vision, all else follows.
Where it is not, there is decadence, desperation, and decay.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Disquiet Gods

“Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West