Fragment

“ UNPLACED FRAGMENTS There are extant about a dozen fragments of whose place in the Twelve Tables we are ignorant. In nearly every instance these fragments consist of only one word or phrase, which later Latin antiquarians have preserved to illustrate an ancient spelling or to explain an archaic usage or to point a definition.
The longest fragment only is worth reproduction for the present purpose: To appeal from any judgement (inuicium) and sentence (poena) is allowed. ”

“ And yet, although they be so tiny that you might sit down and read them all in an evening over the fire, is it not strange that they have stamped on the mind of the world an image so deep and so sharp, of such a character as the world never saw elsewhere? They are fragments, but they have left a symmetrical and an unique impression on the consciousness of the whole world. ”

“ More touching are those inarticulate heaps, cairns of sculptured fragments, piled here and there together and waiting the knowledge which is some time to assort them and translate them into some measure of coherent meaning. ”

“ From time to time, a few truths are revealed, tiny pieces of the vast mosaic of things. Better to divulge the discovery, however humble it be. Others will come who, also gathering a few fragments, will assemble the whole into a picture ever growing larger but ever notched by the unknown. ”

“ The fragments seem out of their proper place, the first ones often last, and vice versa. It seems inconsequential, because we only see the scraps that break through from below, from the true inner, deeper life that flows on steadily and dramatically out of sight. ”

“ Year by year Earth, the great tomb of all animate and inanimate things, is casting up fragments which speak of the mighty past—fragments which come like a resurrection to corroborate the traditions of history, and sometimes to correct or restore its lost or faded pages. ”

“ I conceded, "as already a mere heap of disfigured fragments; but that was the extravagance of my vexation, my despair. It's in point of fact so beautifully fitted that it comes apart piece by piece—which, so far as that goes, you've seen it do in the last quarter of an hour at your own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one by one, yourself and watching me stack them along the ground. They're not even in this state—see!" ”

“ Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments. ”

“ And yet, though 'autographic' fragments of pencil were 'heard' weaving mysterious messages between and under and over slates, and fragments of chalk were seen moving about under a tumbler placed above the table in full view, none of the sitters witnessed that best phenomenon, Mr. ”

“ But the shade of the envelope—it was of a peculiar greenish tint—gave that unconscious spur to the memory which was needed to bring back the very look of the writing which had been on the letter I had so carelessly handled; and I found, as others have found before me, that there is no real forgetfulness in this world; that the most superficial glance may serve to imprint images upon the mind, which only await time and occasion to reappear before us with startling distinctness. ”

“ For whatsoever is most desireable to the sight, thou makest old and deformed, thou breakest in peices the shining Columnes of the world. How doest thou quench the cleare resplendent lights which received theirs from the eternall living spring, wherewith the whole world was illustrated! ”

“ Just in the same way, then, as a beautiful whole made up of parts, or a beautiful living creature, must be of some size, a size to be taken in by the eye, so a story or Plot must be of some length, but of a length to be taken in by the memory. ”

“ Even while we gaze, perhaps a light, fleecy cloud forms itself before our eyes, and we form the concept of the creation of a material object. We know that it is not a mere apparition—it is a form of substance. ”

“ A tree casts a shadow, a house casts a shadow, a needle casts a shadow, even a hair—where the shadow is, there is some substance to fling it; where great blame is cast, there is some occasion for it. You may have stood on a rock, and seen your shadow thrown all down a valley and up the side of an opposite hill, an enormous figure, and a ridiculous caricature of yourself. So the blame cast on you is often excessive and altogether unreasonable and monstrous. ”

“ For the material universe, the sum and crasis of bodies, is the shadow cast by the spiritual universe, the sum and crasis of souls. It’s a picture cast upon the curtain of the darkness, as when the sun, shining through a coloured casement, throws a picture upon a wall. ”

“ These phenomena are not more extraordinary than those of memory, and those of memory are as surprising and unaccountable as those of the perfume of plants, which may be the ideas of the plant.”
“Dear me! how you enlarge the world! But to hear a corpse speak, to see it walking and acting, is that possible?” ”

“ As in a mirror seen?
What spell within thee hath been shrined,
To image back my own deep mind?
Even as a song of other times,
Can trouble memory's springs;
Even as a sound of vesper-chimes,
Can wake departed things ”

“ In these pantheistic sympathies I dimly recall that another sect finds three great mysteries in its esoteric view of the world. The wind whistling through the trees, the river breaking over its rocks, the movements of man and his voice,—or, indeed, his silence,—are the expression of the great mysteries of body, of word, and of thought. ”

“ I am ashamed of my frame, and can hardly forbear expostulating with my destiny. I see myself, and the whole frame of Nature, shrink into fleeting ideas, which, like Epicurus’s atoms, dance about in emptiness. ”

“ Out of the myriad chambers of the soul where they lie in latency, an hundred or a thousand memories rise up, words, deeds, happenings, trivial or mighty, the material for thought or speech waiting in due order for use. ”

“ It can throw back, so to speak, the whole weight of the mystery and drive it so rigorously to the ultimate wall, that the materialistic and metaphorical element is reduced to a mere gap or space or lacuna in the mind that only a material element can fill and yet that we cannot imagine being filled by any material element which we are able to define. ”

“ But these images, which are derived from the remembrance of unreal objects of the world, are as unreal as those objects which cast their reflexions in the intellect; just as the waves rising in the river of a mirage, are as unreal as the mirage itself. ”

“ You find a vague memory of it at best in the useless grandeurs about you, and you seem to be looking at a structure of which the stubborn earth-scented foundations alone remain, with the carved and painted shell that bends above them, while the central substance has utterly crumbled away. ”

“ Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. ”

“ I saw it vividly, as though in our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. ”

“ And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, are joined in one continuous circle. ”

“ There, too, was a gaping hole—but not without its message. Etched in the metal frame, in the same iridescent purple glow, were two words. Two enigmatic words to reverberate throughout the world, burned in by some watcher—some keeper—some warden. ”

“ Occasionally in glancing at the cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast a name, but which alone remain to speak of the real and active life, the joys and griefs, the sins and virtues that centred in the originals of those hard daubs and of ourselves, we may light upon a face that about six generations since was the counterpart of the little boy upon our shoulder, or the daughter standing at our side. ”

“ It was to penetrate into the inmost shrines of Imagination, where human passion and action are reflected in dim and fitful, but deeply significant resemblances, and to copy these with the guileless, humble graces which alone can become them. ”

“ We feel it as a sense of background, a conviction that a given poem is not the record, but the culmination of an experience, and that the experience of which it is the culmination is far larger and more profound than the one which it seems to record. ”

“ The illimitable past and the illimitable future are all painted on the canvas of now by the artist of reflection. Things that have been and things to be are emblazoned on the panorama of reflectional concept. ”

“ The moment is one of awe—the presence of that mysterious and dreadful-looking object, even while its identity remains doubt, chills the heart—it contracts the expanding thoughts to that one object—all interest in the scene lies centered in that one point. ”

“ When these shadows brought into the minds of older people, other thoughts, and showed them different images. When they stole from their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have been, and never were, are always wandering. ”

“ Wishing to convey the shifting aspect of things, or perhaps the composite pile of aspects which represents, at any moment, our realisation of a thing—and as objective description reintroduces the pictorial cliché so far avoided,—he utilises the vast fabric of memory, shot, like iridescent silk, with many indefinable moods. ”

“ Quick, quick, as in a dream, fancy conjures up a vision—a procession, rather—floating along upon the soft bands of autumn sunshine; a procession of mothers, of sisters, of betrothed ones, of wives. As each in turn passes by memory evokes the face, or the faces, that belong to it ”

“ There are phases in nature which correspond to every phase of human thought and emotion; and this stern, cloudy scenery answers to the melancholy fatalism of Greek tragedy, or the kindred mournfulness of the Book of Job. ”

“ You say, some story must be attached to those walls; some legendary interest, of a darker nature, ought to be associated with the mute stone and mortar: you feel a mingled awe and curiosity creep over you as you gaze. ”

“ That only the image, not the soul, lives on.
Lights all aglow . . . and he is still in darkness.
A mystery . . . a riddle . . . a shadow cast over the ages,
And he, who cast the shadow, no longer can be seen.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content. ”

“ We can only give a few outlines picturing their part of the life. Yet if any one has a little imagination he can easily fill in the picture with its various tints and shades. The shadows were often both deep and tragic. ”

“ Thus the vanished ones stare aloft and slowly the heavenly mirror spreads itself for them—a mirror of identifications and explanations. It is all clear—or at least it grows clear—in this mirror; who we are and what we are.... A beautiful image marches across its face. It is the image of the vanished ones, ennobled and deified—become a new illusion, become a God-like creature with flashing eyes. A marvelous, unsurpassable creature whose every gesture is perfection, [Pg 153] whose every grimace is unsurpassable perfection. ”

“ The chambers of imagery in her own mind were evidently peopled with the varied creations that spring from and bear the impress of life's vicissitudes—of fiery trial, or wearying endurance—of the heart's deep emotions, with the soul's lofty aspirings and immortal hopes. ”

“ Probably when we are thinking or talking of a person, we recall some visual image of that person. I have thought what an instructive thing it would be, if under some magic influence—like that, for example, which would construct a ‘palace of truth’—it were arranged that as we gave out our comments on the character or conduct of any person, this image on the retina of memory should change according to the truth, or rather the want of it, in our remarks. ”

“ Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are fast approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. ”

“ An image too may be From mirror into mirror handed on, Until of idol-films even five or six Have thus been gendered. For whatever things Shall hide back yonder in the house, the same, However far removed in twisting ways, May still be all brought forth through bending paths And by these several mirrors seen to be Within the house, since nature so compels All things to be borne backward and spring off At equal angles from all other things. ”

“ The smallest vestiges of them rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks of them as inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, they appear farther away, and therefore larger, than they really are—like objects in a fog. ”

“ If the Ground, on which the Shadow is cast, be not broken and uneven, nor the Surface, from which the Image is reflected, disturb'd and confus'd, a just Figure is immediately presented, without any Art or Attention. ”