We Fear Something Before We

Most People Do Not Believe In Anything Very Much And Our Greatest Poetry Is Given To Us By Those Who Do.

Flaubert Spoke True: To Succeed A Great Artist Must Have Both Character And Fanaticism And Few In This Country Are Willing To Pay The Price. Our Writers Have Either No Personality And Therefore No Style Or A False Personality And Therefore A Bad Style; They Mistake Prejudice For Energy And Accept The Sensation Of Material Well-being As A System Of Thought.

Vulgarity Is The Garlic In The Salad Of Charm.

Melancholy And Remorse Form The Deep Leaden Keel Which Enables Us To Sail Into The Wind Of Reality; We Run Aground Sooner Than The Flat-bottomed Pleasure-lovers But We Venture Out In Weather That Would Sink Them And We Choose Our Direction.

When I Contemplate The Accumulation Of Guilt And Remorse Which, Like A Garbage-can, I Carry Through Life, And Which Is Fed Not Only By The Lightest Action But By The Most Harmless Pleasure, I Feel Man To Be Of All Living Things The Most Biologically Incompetent And Ill-organized. Why Has He Acquired A Seventy Years Life-span Only To Poison It Incurably By The Mere Being Of Himself? Why Has He Thrown Conscience, Like A Dead Rat, To Putrefy In The Well?