Lettice Cooper

“They knew that flowers die and leaves fall, but they could not carry that knowledge into their own lives; the acceptance was beyond them. Sighing for the blossom, they missed the fruit, growing and ripening. Regretting the fruit, they did not see the delicate tracery of bare boughs against a winter sky.”
― Lettice Cooper, The New House

“I suppose, Maurice thought, there is no personal immortality! All that remained of his father was this vivid image in his own mind, in Rhoda's, in his mother's; less vivid in the minds of others, but alive still in an incident, a word, a gesture that had left its print. Here on the end of the club fender his father had sat twelve months ago, intervening in a dispute that was growing heated, laughing at the two disputants, making them laugh unwillingly. Once he had looked across at Maurice, and smiled, sharing the absurdity. Maurice had loved him at that moment, because he was never pompous, did not take offence, never stood upon his own dignity, saw clear. And all that remained of that living, breathing figure on the end of the club fender was the memory growing fainter, like a ripple of sound spreading out in widening rings through the air.”
― Lettice Cooper, The New House