He bowed his head as if to avoid a blow, so plain he seemed to hear somewhat within him crying with a high voice and loud, "Thou art nothing. And all thy desires and memories and loves and dreams, nothing. The little dead earth-louse were of greater avail than thou, were it not nothing as thou art nothing. For all is nothing: earth and sky and sea and they that dwell therein. Nor shall this illusion comfort thee, if it might, that when thou art abolished these things shall endure for a season, stars and months return, and men grow old and die, and new men and women live and love and die and be forgotten. For what is it to thee, that shalt be as a blown-out flame? And all things in earth and heaven, and things past and things for to come, and life and death, and the mere elements of space and time, of being and not being, shall be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be nothing, for ever.
( E.R. Eddison )
[ The Worm Ouroboros ]
www.QuoteSweet.com