ORIGINAL SOURCES
The history of the Christian religion might conceivably be written as was this history named below:
Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet found the histories of the American Revolution so full of errors that, in his disgust, he resolved to make some history that could not lie. The result was the unique folios now in the keeping of the Lenox library, in which the author has never written a word, but has told the story by the assembling of original documents and letters. He never allowed himself to insert a copy, no matter how many hundred dollars the original document might cost him.
(2273)
ORIGINALITY
A really fertile creative mind has got to produce—wheat and tares, flowers and weeds—all springing from a rich soil. Contrary to the general belief, there is nothing so deadly to the writer of creative power as a too early development of the critical faculty. That is why the young man who is always conscious of Lowell and Emerson looking over his shoulder never is original.—Robert Bridges, Collier’s Weekly.
(2274)
As Plutarch tells us, “it is well to go for a light to another man’s fire, but not to tarry by it, instead of kindling a torch of one’s own.” A torch of one’s own!—that is a possession worth having, whether it be a flaming beacon on the hilltop or a tiny taper in the window. We can not tell how far a little candle throws its beams, nor who is laying his course by its flickering light. The most that we can do—and it is also the least we should do—is to tend the flame carefully and to keep it steady.—Brander Matthews.
(2275)