Commonplace Book - 9/23/22 - Rene-Jacques de Chateaubriand

“Something melancholy enters into relationships not formed until the middle of our lives. If two people do not meet in the prime of youth, the memories of the beloved are not mixed in the portion of days when we breathed without knowing her, and these days, which belong to other companions, are painful to recall and, as it were, severed from our present existence. Is there a disproportion of age? Then the drawbacks increase. The older one began his life before the younger one was born, and the younger one, in turn, is destined to live on alone; the one walked in solitude on the far side of the cradle and the other shall walk in solitude on the near side of the grave. The past was a desert for the first, and the future shall be a desert for the second."

--Rene-Jacques de Chateaubriand, Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800 (1848)