In my experience the spider is the smallest creature whose gaze can be felt.
—Iris Murdoch, Under the Net, 1954
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that
whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then,
something.
—Robert Frost, “For Once, Then, Something,” New Hampshire, 1923
True mental health consists in a perfect recollection of the past.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Madness,” The World as 1844
