One could love reason like an Encyclopaedist and still be favorably inclined toward mysticism. Throughout the ages, up to the eyes of van Gogh, when he looked at a coffee pot or a garden path, mysticism has expanded the human realm by all sorts of threshold experiences.
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
I am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when she went to the market. And I am going from my valley. But this time I shall never return. I am leaving behind me my 50 years of memory—memory. Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago of men and women long since dead. Yet who shall say what is real and what is not. Can I believe this all gone when their voices are still a glory in my ears. No. And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain within my mind. There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can go close my eyes on my valley as it is today and it is gone. And I see it as it was when I was a boy—green it was and possessed of the plenty of the earth. In all Wales there was none so beautiful.
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)
Had she come all the way for this,
To part at last without a kiss?
Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain
That her own eyes might see him slain
Beside the haystack in the floods?
—William Morris (1834–1896)