CHURCHILL
Violet Asquith describes a conversation with Winston Churchill at the dinner table: “For a long time he remained sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. ‘And I,’ he said almost despairingly, ‘am thirty-two already.’ On reflection he added thoughtfully, ‘Younger than anyone else who counts, though.’ Then savagely, ‘Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!’ He burst into a diatribe about the brevity of life and ended: ‘We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glowworm.'” The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, Ed., page 121.
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