“Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.”

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 174.

Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Context: Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

As quoted by Augustine of Hippo in De Trinitate, Book XIII, Chapter III

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

On his ambitions as a youth, in an Academy of Achievement interview (28 October 2000) http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gor0int-1
1990s

Source: Americanah

Introductory poem.
Poems (1869)
Context: This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze
But is the echo of some voice beloved:
Its pines have human tones; its billows wear
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes.
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful
Because of something lovelier than themselves,
Which breathes within them, and will never die. —
Haunted,—but not with any spectral gloom;
Earth is suffused, inhabited by heaven.

Source: An Old Town by the Sea (1893), Ch. IV. "A Stroll about Town (continued)", p. 44