The Hour Hand of Life
The Hour-Hand of Life: Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea – all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1878) Aphorisms on Love and Hate (excerpts from Human, All Too Human)