“We can never be closer somehow
For the moment that lasts…
Is this moment now?”
Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist
Song lyrics, Islands (1987)
“It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home — only the millions of last moments… nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”
— Thomas Pynchon, book Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
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Thomas Pynchon134
American novelist 1937Related quotes
“In its last moment, the whole of my life will last only a moment.”
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
En último instante, toda mi vida durará un instante.
Voces (1943)
Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993) Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer
Source: As quoted in 1990, "Rudolf Nureyev, Charismatic Dancer Who Gave Fire to Ballet's Image, Dies at 54" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/07/arts/rudolf-nureyev-charismatic-dancer-who-gave-fire-to-ballet-s-image-dies-at-54.html (7 January 1993)
“The joys of love… last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.”
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Variant: We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
“That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.”
Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888–1927) Italian American anarchist executed by Massachusetts
Statement attributed to Vanzetti by Philip D. Stong, http://www.powys-lannion.net/Powys/America/S_V.htm a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance who visited Vanzetti in prison in May of 1927 shortly before he and Sacco were executed. <br class="br">Context: If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist
The Law of Mind (1892)
Context: Now, let there be an indefinite succession of these inferential acts of comparative perception; and it is plain that the last moment will contain objectively the whole series. Let there be, not merely an indefinite succession, but a continuous flow of inference through a finite time; and the result will be a mediate objective consciousness of the whole time in the last moment. In this last moment, the whole series will be recognized, or known as known before.