I’ve been trying to find this quote for years because I think a poster here used to use it as a sig, or posted it once in a thread. It’s pretty obscure and I can’t remember the exact wording or the author at all, but I remember it being rather beautiful. It had something to do with how life was the moment between when a moth enters the archway of a lighted bell tower at night then floats off into the darkness on the other side.
I’m 90% sure it was a moth.
I’m 85% sure a tower was involved.
I’m 35% sure it was an archway or “bell” tower.
I know what you’re talking about, but I’ve heard it as a bird. It actually came up in the Discworld book I just finished reading, Interesting Times. The Old English saying goes something like:
It was attributed to an advisor who was with Paulinus when he was trying to convert King Edwin of Northumbria, in the Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum: “You are sitting feasting with your ealdormen and thegns in winter time; the fire is burning on the hearth in the middle of the hall and all inside is warm, while outside the wintry storms of rain and snow are raging; and a sparrow flies swiftly through the hall. It enters in at one door and quickly flies out the other. For the few moments it is inside, the storm and wintry tempest cannot touch it, but after the briefest moment of calm, it flits from your sight, out of the wintry storm and into it again.” (scroll down page 95)