On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth

William Hazlitt
12 pages (2007/1827); 132KB download
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00226

DESCRIPTION

This essay explores one's sense of time and aging, the wonders and annoyances of life's experiences and one's sense of the temporal and the eternal:

"No young man believes he shall ever die... There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for every thing. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals. One half of time indeed is spent -- the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures, for there is no line drawn and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes... As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes vivid. Nothing else indeed seems of any consequence. We can never cease wondering that that which has ever been should cease to be. We find many things remain the same: why then should there be change in us?"