At my age, I only just begin to apprehend the truth
About things too late to mend: and that is to be old.
Nevertheless, I am glad if I can come to know them.

Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

Strength demanded
That seems too much, is just strength enough given.

In a world of fugitives
The person taking the opposite direction
Will appear to run away.

I feel very tired, as only the old feel.
The young feel tired at the end of an action,--
The old, at the beginning.

There are hours when there seems to be no past or
future,
Only a present moment of pointed light
When you want to burn. When you stretch out your
hand
To the flames. They only come once,
Thank God, that kind

The moment of sudden loathing
And the season of stifled sorrow
The whisper, the transparent deception
The keeping up of appearances
The making the best of a bad job
All twined and tangled together, all are recorded.

In an old house there is always listening, and more is heard than is spoken.
And what is spoken remains in the room, waiting for the future to hear it.
And whatever happens began in the past, and presses hard on the future.

Whatever you have learned, Harry, you must remember
That there is always more: we cannot rest in being
The impatient spectators of malice or stupidity.
We must try to penetrate the other private worlds
Of make-believe and fear. To rest in our own suffering
Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more

And the past is about to happen, and the future was
long since settled.

And the wings of the future darken the past, the beak
and claws have desecrated

History.

Whatever I hoped for

Now that I am here I know I shall not find it.
The instinct to return to the point of departure
And start again as if nothing had happened,
Isn't that all folly?

One thing you cannot know:
The sudden extinction of every alternative,
The unexpected crash of the iron cataract.
You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it.

It goes a good deal deeper
Than what people call their conscience; it is just the cancer
That eats away the self.

This is what matters, but it is unspeakable,
Untranslatable: I talk in general terms
Because the particular has no language. One thinks to escape
By violence, but one is still alone
In an over-crowded desert, jostled by ghosts.

I am the old house
With the noxious smell and the sorrow before morning,
In which all past is present, all degradation
Is unredeemable. As for what happens--
Of the past you can only see what is past,
Not what is always present. That is what matters.

But how can I explain, how can I explain to you?
You will understand less after I have explained it.
All that I could hope to make you understand
Is only events: not what has happened.
And people to whom nothing has ever happened
Cannot understand the unimportance of events.

Thus with most careful devotion
Thus with precise attention
To detail, interfering preparation
Of that which is already prepared
Men tighten the knot of confusion
Into perfect misunderstanding

"Nothing has been changed. I have seen to that.

AGATHA

Yes. I mean that at Wishwood he will find another Harry.
The man who returns will have to meet
The boy who left."