The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one’s capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension.
Twenty-five
Like every aging artist of genuine accomplishment, he knew—none better—that there is no satisfaction save the satisfaction of fatigue after honest endeavour. He knew—none better—that wealth and glory and fine clothes are naught, and that striving is all.
Twenty-six
Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven’s sake do not forget to live.
Twenty-seven
My Birthday
Sometimes I suddenly halt and address myself: “You may be richer or you may be poorer; you may live in greater pomp and luxury, or in less. The point is, that you will always be, essentially, what you are now. You have no real satisfaction to look forward to except the satisfaction of continually inventing, fancying, imagining, scribbling. Say another thirty years of these emotional ingenuities, these interminable variations on the theme of beauty. Is it good enough?” And I answered: “Yes.” But who knows? Who can preclude the regrets of the dying couch?
Twenty-eight
The balanced sanity of a great mind makes impossible exaggeration, and, therefore, distortion.