Fifteen
Marcus Aurelius is assuredly regarded as the greatest of writers in the human machine school, and not to read him daily is considered by many to be a bad habit.
Sixteen
Part of the secret of Balzac’s unique power over the reader is the unique tendency of his own interest in the thing to be told.
Seventeen
“Anna of the Five Towns” finished 1901
The art of fiction is the art of telling a story. This statement is not so obvious and unnecessary as it may seem. Most beginners and many “practised hands” attend to all kinds of things before they attend to the story. With them the art of fiction is the art of describing character or landscape, of getting “atmosphere,” and of being humorous, pathetic, flippant, or terrifying; while the story is a perfunctory excuse for these feats. They are so busy with the traditional paraphernalia of fiction, with the tricks of the craft, that what should be the principal business is reduced to a subsidiary task. They forget that character, landscape, atmosphere, humour, pathos, etc., are not ends in themselves, but only means toward an end.
Eighteen
How true it is that the human soul is solitary, that content is the only true riches, and that to be happy we must be good.