Source: Corelli's Mandolin
“In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.”
The Single Grave from The London Literary Gazette (29th August 1829)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
“But where you succeed will never matter so much as where you fail.”
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)
Variant: The rain to the wind said,
You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost
30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal.
