jillian n.

“You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!"
It was worth a wound -- it was worth many wounds -- to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“What if we spoke every word as if it was our last?
Would we hurry to impress the masses with our wisdom?
Would we capture humanity in a poets hurried flow?
Would you even care?
I could speak as if my words were my last.
But you wouldn't remember them until I'm gone.”
― Elizabeth Novak

“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”
― Irwin Shaw

“The universe is unraveling. It still is. We won the day. We won the battle. We won whatever unit of measurement you care to say that we won. We returned to the dangerous equilibrium we had before, which we can only assume, or hope, or wish is better. But, of course, we did not stop the unraveling of the universe. The universe is not a thing that is, it is not a thing at all. It is the very action of its going. It is, in fact, its own dissolves and our lives – the entire span of human existence going back and back and, if we are lucky, forward and forward – the entire span is spent within this dissolve.

So look at the fleeting stars with fleeting eyes, and feel how the earth beneath you gives. It is all a temporary manifestation of particles, and it is all unraveling back to particulate silence. The bustle of the human day will come and will go. And then there will be night.

But how beautiful these moments within the dissolve! What a temporary perfection we can find within this passing world! Everything good ever done! Everything good that was done today, and all the good people doing it, and back and back and forward and forward, all of that beauty within a universe unraveling.

Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is small, and yet it is. How unlikely! How fantastic! And stupid. And excellent”
― Joseph Fink