The Realization That Life Is

Some Few There Must Be In Every Age And Every Land Of Whom Life Claims Nothing Very Insistently Save That They Write Perfectly Of Beautiful Happenings.

A Man Of Genuine Literary Genius, Since He Possesses A Temperament Whose Susceptibilities Are Of Wider Area Than Those Of Any Other, Is Inevitably Of All People The One Most Variously Affected By His Surroundings. And It Is He, In Consequence, Who Of All People Most Faithfully And Compactly Exhibits The Impress Of His Times And His Times' Tendencies, Not Merely In His Writings Where It Conceivably Might Be Just Predetermined Affectation But In His Personality.

A Book , Once It Is Printed And Published, Becomes Individual. It Is By Its Publication As Decisively Severed From Its Author As In Parturition A Child Is Cut Off From Its Parent. The Book "means" Thereafter, Perforce, Both Grammatically And Actually, Whatever Meaning This Or That Reader Gets Out Of It.

What Is Man That His Welfare Be Considered? An Ape Who Chatters Of Kinship With The Archangels While He Very Filthily Digs For Groundnuts. And Yet I Perceive That This Same Man Is A Maimed God. He Is Condemned Under Penalty To Measure Eternity With An Hourglass And Infinity With A Yardstick And What Is More, He Very Nearly Does It.

Love, I Take It, Must Look Toward Something Not Quite Accessible, Something Not Quite Understood.