Echo
Time, the river
Heraclitus has the oldest version. Everyone after him is trying to say what the current does to a person who thought they were standing still.
1 · Heraclitus
You cannot step twice into the same river.Horace makes the practical conclusion: pluck the day you actually have.
2 · Horace
Pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one.Fitzgerald’s boats beat on, and are carried back. The effort is real. So is the current.
3 · F. Scott Fitzgerald
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.Faulkner says the past is not even past. Borges says the past is what you are made of.
4 · William Faulkner
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.5 · Jorge Luis Borges
Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river.