A message from a past self

I moved some old papers today and an index card fell out, with two quotations in my handwriting from, I don't know, twenty-odd years ago or longer.



Google can't find the former but tells me the latter is Hopkins. I have no recollection of when or why I wrote these down, or how I came across them, beyond a vague and probably quite wrong feeling that perhaps I found them in an essay by Forster. I did learn to record sources at an early age, so perhaps this is from my schooldays, though the ink suggests the fountain pen my mother gave me in my first year at University.

I'm not sure that I like the youth this card suggests I was!