laurel

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever i find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet... I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“somehow it went from too soon to too late, without the right moment in between.”
― Bridget Collins, The Binding

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited