Alain de Botton

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

The Tree of Possibilities - we see life this way for a brief time only

"Your heels on the sidewalk make me think of the roads I never traveled, that stretch away like the boughs of a tree. You have reawakened the obsession of my early youth: I would imagine life before me like a tree. I used to call it the tree of possibilities. We see life like that way for only a brief time. Thereafter, it comes to look like a track laid out once and for all, a tunnel one can never get out of. Still, the old spectre of the tree stays with us in the form of an ineradicable nostalgia. You have made me remember that tree, and in return, I want to pass you it’s image, have you hear its enthralling murmur.” - Milan Kundera, Identity

If that high world

If that high world, which lies beyond
Our own, surviving Love endears;
If there the cherish'd heart be fond,
The eye the same, except in tears ---
How welcome those untrodden spheres !
How sweet this very hour to die !
To soar from earth and find all fears
Lost in thy light --- Eternity !
 
It must be so:  'tis not for self
That we so tremble on the brink;
And striving to o'erleap the gulf,
Yet cling to Being's severing link.
Oh !   in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares;
With them the immortal waters drink,
And soul in soul grow deathless their!

Lord Byron

I ask but to forget

"Oh Memory, torture me no more,
The present's all o'ercast;
My hopes of future bliss are o'er,
In mercy veil the past.
Why bring those images to view
I henceforth must resign ?
Ah ! why those happy hours renew,
That never can be mine?
Past pleasure doubles present pain,
To sorrow adds regret,
Regret and hope are both in vain,
I ask but to — forget."

Lord Byron