Verba aliena IV - The present

"I'm sure Mr Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I'm sure he's not like that dreadful young man, Mr Ponting, who told me that he considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After all, what is the present? Half of it's the past, and the better half, too, I should say," she added, turning to Mr Fortescue.

Virginia Woolf, in Night and Day