but I have promises to keep

Only life as we have, within our hazard-given abilities, made it ourselves, life as Marx defined it-the actions of men(and of women) in pursuit of their ends.

The river of life, of mysterious laws and mysterious choice, flows past a deserted embankment; and along that other deserted embankment Charles now begins to pace, a man behind the invisible gun-carriage on which rests his own corpse. He walks towards an imminent, self-given death? I think not; for he has at last found an atom of faith in himself, a true uniqueness, on which to build; has already begun, though he would bitterly deny it, though there are tears in his eyes to support his denial, to realize that life is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after the losing throw of the dice but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city's iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.- closing paragraph of The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles