Alas, what are all of man's works,

past and present: a mere handful of mud

to be desiccated by a ray of sunlight,

and scattered by a gust of wind.

Giorgio de Chirico

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe. Henri-Frederic Amiel (1864)