The sad—the chilling conviction therefore, went to the old man’s heart, that the only being left to solace him on earth, had deserted him; and his spirit was bowed down in despair.

George W M Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

Hermetic quote Reynolds Wagner despair

Consider also:

  1. “That poem of Browning owes much of its haunting charm to this very circumstance, that the reader is never told who Childe Roland is, or why he wants to get to the Dark Tower, or what he expects to find when he does get there. There is a skillfully constructed atmosphere of Giants, and Ogres, and Hunchbacks, and the rest of the apparatus of fairy-tales; but there is no trace of the influence of Bædeker in the style. Now this is really very irritating to anybody who happens to be seriously concerned to get to that tower. I remember, as a boy, what misery I suffered over this poem. Had Browning been alive, I think I would have sought him out, so seriously did I take the Quest.”
  2. With the Adepts
  3. But, hey, this kind of thing’s going on in libraries everywhere, you know. More or less, that is.
  4. “Yet excess is the secret of success.”
  5. “Then suddenly everything changed. That is, everything was just the same as before—I was crawling along the corridor in just the same way—but the pain and fatigue, passing beyond the level of endurance, seemed to switch something off inside me. Or else just the opposite—they switched something on.”