Quotes from John Williams

He remembered hearing of the superstition that told them they would come to a sharp brink, and sail over it, to fall forever from the world in space and darkness. The legends had not kept them back, he knew; but he wondered how often, in their lonely sailing, they had intimations of depthless plunge, and how often they were repeated in their dreams.

Perhaps we are wiser when we are young, though the philosopher would dispute with me. But I swear to you, we were friends from that moment onward; and that moment of foolish laughter was a bond stronger than anything that came between us later —victories or defeats, loyalties or betrayals, griefs or joys. But the days of youth go, and part of us goes with them, not to return.

He felt that wherever he lived, and wherever he would live hereafter, he was leaving the city more and more, withdrawing into the wilderness.

Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia: My dear old friend, you have been eminently correct in your descriptions and enthusiasms over the years – this is the most extraordinary of cities in the most extraordinary of times.

one that none of us can see. We cannot know at last the effects of what we do, whether for good or ill.

He felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.

In this early morning stillness, the events of the day seem far away and unreal. I know that the course of my life - of all our lives - has been changed. How do the others feel? Do they know? Do they know that before us lies a road at the end of which is either death or greatness? The two words go around in my head, around and around, until it seems they are the same.

There's nothing worse than being alone when you aren't strong enough to face your own thoughts. You can stand it just so long, and then––Well, then you just can't be alone any longer. You've got to do something, no matter how silly it is. You've got to make yourself believe you aren't alone, even if you are.

The possibility has occurred to me that the proper condition of man, which is to say that condition in which he is most admirable, may not be that prosperity, peace, and harmony which I labored to give to Rome." He has founded his empire, in other words, on a misconception.

Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract.

came to know that loss was the condition of our living. It is a knowledge that one cannot give to another.

We are most fortunate, my dear Vergil, that we need not marry to ensure our posterity, but can make the children of our souls march beautifully into the future, where they will not change or die.

It was more nearly an instinct than knowledge, however, that made me understand that if it is one's destiny to change the world, it is his necessity first to change himself. If he is to obey his destiny, he must find or invent within himself some hard and secret part that is indifferent to himself, to others, and even to the world that he is destined to remake, not to his own desire, but to a nature that he will discover in the process of remaking.

I have come to understand Terentia, I believe. In her own way, she might have been wiser than any of us. I do not know what has become of her. What does become of people who slip quietly out of your life?

One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one's acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences.

Was Terentia content to be a woman, as I was not? When I lived in the world, I believed that she was content, and had a secret contempt for her. Now I do not know. I do not know the human heart of another; I do not even know my own.

this one of being a mortal god has been the most uncomfortable. I am a man, and as foolish and weak as most men; if I have had an advantage over my fellows, it is that I have known this of myself, and have therefore known their weaknesses, and never presumed to find much more strength and wisdom in myself than I found in another. It was one of the sources of my power, that knowledge.

There is so much that is not said. I almost believe that the form has not been devised that will let me say what I need to say.

I go toward Capri for my holiday; but it seems to me now, in the quietness of this night, beneath the mysterious geometry of the stars, where nothing exists except this hand that forms the curious letters which by some other mysterious process you will understand, it seems to me that I go somewhere else, to a place as mysterious as any I have ever seen. I shall write further tomorrow. Perhaps we can discover that place toward which I travel.

But there was a time when we were young - Marcus Agrippa was young too, - there was a time when we were friends, and knew that we would be friends for as long as we lived. Agrippa; Maecenas; myself; Salvidienus Rufus. Salvidienus is dead too, but he died long ago. Perhaps we all died then, when we were young.

Do they know that before us lies a road at the end of which is either death or greatness? The two words go around in my head, around and around, until it seems they are the same.

the façade he has erected not so much to disguise himself from another as to mask himself against his own recognition.

For it seems to me now that when I read those books and wrote my words, I read and wrote of a man who bore my name but a man whom I hardly know. Strain as I might, I can hardly see him now; and when I glimpse him, he recedes as in a mist, eluding my most searching gaze. I wonder, if he saw me, would he recognize what he has become? Would he recognize the caricature that all men become of themselves? I do not believe that he would.

Even now, after all these years, I can taste the bitter sweetness of that body, and feel beneath me the firm warmth. It is odd that I can do so, for I know that the flesh of Julius Antonius now is smoke, and is dispersed into the air. That body is no more, and my body remains upon this earth. It is odd to know that. No other man has touched me since that afternoon. No man shall touch me for as long as I shall live.