So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight watching over nothing.

First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

(This is the last sentence of “The Great Gatsby”. This sentence is also on the grave of Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda.)