Laudator Temporis Acti

From a conversation reported in The Notebooks of Henry James, edd. F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (1947; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 374 ("Project for The Ambassadors"):

Oh, you're young, you're blessedly young—be glad of it; be glad of it and live. Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do—but live. This place and these impressions, as well as many of those, for so many days, of So-and-So's and So-and-So's life, that I've been receiving and that have had their abundant message, make it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so enough before—and now I'm old; I'm, at any rate, too old for what I see. Oh, I do see, at least—I see a lot. It's too late. It has gone past me. I've lost it. It couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me—for one's life takes a form and holds one: one lives as one can. But the point is that you have time. That's the great thing. You're, as I say, damn you, so luckily, so happily, so hatefully young. Don't be stupid. Of course I don't dream you are, or I shouldn't be saying these awful things to you. Don't, at any rate, make my mistake. Live!