E.R. Eddison

These things hath Fate brought to pass, and we be but Fate's whipping-tops bandied what way she will.

Thunder and blood and night must usurp our parts, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece.

Surely time past is gone by like a shadow.

He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world. Though hast my sword. Strike. Death shall be a sweet rest to me. Thraldom, not death, should terrify me.

This last best luck of all: that earth should gape for me when my great deeds were ended.

Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o'erleaping actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is become for me a vision only and a mock-show.

But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? . . . Who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star.

Surely,_ he said, __he great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom__ fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning__ fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn.