Everything that now exists, no matter how great and good it is, lasts for a time, fulfills a purpose, and then passes on. And so it will be with all the works of art that...

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,That draws oblivion’s curtains over kings;Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,Their names without a record are forgot,Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th’ dustNor...

…And although thus short, we shorten many ways,Living so little while we are alive;In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delightSo unawares comes on perpetual night,And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal flight.

This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who...

And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not...

Not forever does the bulbul singIn balmy shades of bowers,Not forever lasts the springNor ever blossom the flowers.Not forever reigneth joy,Sets the sun on days of bliss,Friendships not forever last,They know not life, who know...

I have a print – you can buy them at the Victoria and Albert Museum – of a photograph of the village street of Thetford, taken in 1868, in which William Smith is not. The...

Then he asked my age and I asked his. That’s the tradition in China. If we know each other’s ages we can understand each other’s past. We Chinese have been collective for so long, personal...