Eric Rücker Eddison, CB, CMG was an English civil servant and author, writing epic fantasy novels under the name E. R. Eddison. His notable works include The Worm Ouroboros and the Zimiamvian Trilogy . Wikipedia
“I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.”
A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941)
Context: The black arrowed swoop of the moment swung high into the unceilinged future, ten, fifty, sixty years, may be: then, past seeing, up to that warmthless unconsidered mock-time, when nothing shall be left but the memorial that fits all (except, if there be, the most unhappiest) of human kind: I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.
“Thou art nothing. And all thy desires and memories and loves and dreams, nothing.”
Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Ch. 28 : Zora Rach Nam Psarrion, p. 427
Context: Thou art nothing. And all thy desires and memories and loves and dreams, nothing. The little dead earth-louse were of greater avail than thou, were it not nothing as thou art nothing. For all is nothing: earth and sky and sea and they that dwell therein. Nor shall this illusion comfort thee, if it might, that when thou art abolished these things shall endure for a season, stars and months return, and men grow old and die, and new men and women live and love and die and be forgotten. For what is it to thee, that shalt be as a blown-out flame? and all things in earth and heaven, and things past and things for to come, and life and death, and the mere elements of space and time, of being and not being, all shall be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be nothing, for ever.
Ch. 33 : Queen Sophonisba in Galing, p. 499 http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two39.htm
The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
Fiorinda, in Chapter 7, "A Night-Piece on Ambremerine"
Mistress of Mistresses (1935)
Therewith the hippogriff, as if maddened with the day-beams, plunged like a wild horse, spread wide its rainbow pinions, reared, and took wing. But the Lord Juss was sprung astride of it, and the grip of his knees on the ribs of it was like brazen clamps. The firm land seemed to rush away beneath him to the rear; the lake and the shore and islands thereof showed in a moment small and remote, and the figures of the Queen and his companions like toys, then dots, then shrunken to nothingness, and the vast silence of the upper air opened and received him into utter loneliness. In that silence earth and sky swirled like the wine in a shaken goblet as the wild steed rocketed higher and higher in great spirals. A cloud billowy-white shut in the sky before them; brighter and brighter it grew in its dazzling whiteness as they sped towards it, until they touched it and the glory was dissolved in a gray mist that grew still darker and colder as they flew till suddenly they emerged from the further side of the cloud into a radiance of blue and gold blinding in its glory.
Ch. 28 : Zora Rach Nam Psarrion, p. 420 http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two34.htm
The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Ch. 28 : Zora Rach Nam Psarrion, p. 427
Ch. 3 : The Red Foliot http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two09.htm
The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Chapter 28, "Zora Rach Nam Psarrion"
Mevrian, in Chapter 8, "The First Expedition to Impland"
The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Chapter 4, "Conjuring in the Iron Tower"
Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Chapter 4, "Conjuring in the Iron Tower"
