Memory

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?" Tennessee Williams

"He who does not read, at 70 years will have lived only one life, his own! He who reads, will have lived 5000 years: He was there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired infinity... Because "Reading is backward immortality." Umberto Eco

"Gracious God, who was he, weak and friendless creature, that such a love should be poured out upon him? Not in vain--not in vain has he lived--hard and thankless should he be to think so--that has such a treasure given him. What is ambition compared to that, but selfish vanity? To be rich, to be famous? What do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under the ground, along with idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you--follows your memory with secret blessing--or precedes you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar--if dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me." WM Thackeray, Henry Esmond, Chapter 20