Harold Henkel

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered. But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they have inherited from their faiths, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons. Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us, and to be forgotten, when they in their turn have vanished. The destiny of mankind is not wholly governed by its ‘stars’.”
― F.L. Lucas, Style: The Art of Writing Well

“The American navigator sets sail from Boston to buy tea in China. He lands in Canton, stays there a few days, and returns. In under two years he has traveled the circumference of the globe and seen land only once. During a crossing of eight to ten months, he has drunk brackish water and lived on salted meat. He has battled constantly with the sea, with disease, and with boredom. But upon his return, he can sell his tea for a penny to a pound less than the English merchant: his goal has been achieved.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving ready-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honored.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey