Eleni

“They came as quietly as rain, and went away like mists drifting. There were jests about them and songs. And the songs outlasted the jests. At last they became a legend, which haunted those farms for ever: they were spoken of when men told of hopeless quests, and held up to laughter or glory, whichever men had to give. And”
― Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

“Then said Fate to Chance: "Let us play our old game again." And they played it again together, using the gods as pieces, as they had played it oft before. So that those things which have been shall all be again, and under the same bank in the same land a sudden glare of singlight on the same spring day shall bring the same daffodil to bloom once more and the same child shall pick it, and not regretted shall be the billion years that fell between. And the same old faces shall be seen again, yet not bereaved of their familiar haunts. And you and I shall in a garden meet again upon an afternoon in summer when the sun stands midway between his zenith and the sea, where we met oft before. For Fate and Chance play but one game together with every move the same, and they play it oft to while eternity away.”
― Lord Dunsany, Time and the Gods

“Then I perceived, what I had never thought, that all these staring houses were not alike, but different one from another, because they held different dreams.”
― Lord Dunsany, A Dreamer's Tales

“We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree