Echoes

Time is a river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by, and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

Have you also learned that secret from the river: that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on.

It is said that what is called the spirit of an age is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same.

Nothing is permanent in all the world. All things are fluid; every image forms, wandering through change. Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river, for neither the river nor the swift hour can stop its course; but as wave impels wave, and as each wave comes, the one before is both impelled by the next and impels the one ahead, so time both flees and follows and is always new.

Furthermore, form and substance are like dew on a blade of grass, and fleeting life is as a flash of lightning, instantly emptied and immediately lost.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

We live in a world that is lit by lightning. So much is changing and will change, but so much endures and transcends time.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.

This world of dew / is only a world of dew — / and yet... and yet...

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

The scenes of life are like the pictures in a magic lantern: we see them, one after another, with vivid distinctness; but as soon as one vanishes, it is utterly forgotten; and then the next appears, completely different from what went before — though at bottom it is always the same story.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

An old silent pond. A frog jumps into the pond — splash! Silence again.

This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life. This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.