On the infinite possibilities that life offers for thought and writing

"It is the very extent of human life, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, month, years spent in one fond pursuit after another [that], baffling the grasp of our actual perception make it slide form our memory...What canvas would be big enough to hold its striking groups, its endless subjects!...What a huge heap, a "huge, dumb heap," of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deep and intense, often pass through the mind in only one day's thinking or reading, for instance!" William Hazlitt