"Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that"

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Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?

— Julian Barnes