‘Well, an ye like maids so little, y’are true natural man; for God made them twain by intention, and brought true love into the world, to be man’s hope and woman’s comfort.’
There are no persons so far away as those who are both married and estranged, so that they seem out of earshot, or to have no common tongue.
My idea of man’s chief end was to enrich the world with things of beauty, and have a fairly good time myself while doing so.
But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts. He has something else to think about beside the money-box. He has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an aim before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because there is no end to it short of perfection. He will better himself a little day by day; or, even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that once upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he fell in love with a star. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost.’ Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The louts he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey’s snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion’s heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty.
People do things, and suffer martyrdom, because they have an inclination that way. The best artist is not the man who fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the practice of his art. And instead of having a taste for being successful merchants and retiring at thirty, some people have a taste for high and what we call heroic forms of excitement.