Seventeen
Am I, a portion of the Infinite Force that existed billions of years ago, and which will exist billions of years hence, going to allow myself to be worried by any terrestrial physical or mental event? I am not.
Eighteen
There is not a successful inexpert author writing to-day who would not be more successful—who would not be better esteemed and in receipt of a larger income—if he had taken the trouble to become expert. Skill does count; skill is always worth its cost in time and labour.
Nineteen
It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.
Twenty
For me there is no supremacy in art. When fifty artists have contrived to be supreme, supremacy becomes impossible. Take a little song by Grieg. It is perfect, it is supreme. No one could be greater than Grieg was great when he wrote that song. The whole last act of The Twilight of the Gods is not greater than a little song of Grieg’s.
Twenty-one
We talked books. We just simply enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes at an agricultural show. No pastime is more agreeable to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none is more delightfully futile.