" When one was well the next thing flowed in so easily and naturally, but when one was tired to death it sent before it a wave of nervous apprehension. Would one be able to manage? Would one make a mess of it? Was it going to be just the last straw which would break one down completely? Engulfed in this fear, Sally had taught herself to think of the next thing as though it were the last thing. Just this one more thing and then no more. If it were the last thing, then it did not seem too hard to rally one's forces just once more. Obliteration of the future seemed to lead to obliteration of the past too, and there could be a sense, she knew, in which this living for the moment only could be evil. It could be licence, and then the destruction of past and future was a betrayal of both. But when you took the moment in your hands as selflessly as you were able, past and future were not so much destroyed as gathered into it in one perfect whole, and living for it was not destructive but creative. The moment was no longer the last thing but the one thing, and so nothing else mattered and one would not fail. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , The Heart of the Family (Eliots of Damerosehay, #3)