‘If you had gone down by the side of the bridge you could not have walked across there?’
‘No, teacher.’
‘If you were to try and were to put your feet on the water, where would you go?’
‘To hell, teacher.’
The association of the question, ‘Where would you go?’ was too strong.
This sunset, which is common to the whole county, is more to me than anything exclusively mine.
If emotion be profound, symbolism, as a means of expression, is indispensable.
There would be no objection to ‘telling the truth’ about Burns, Byron, and Shelley if it could be told. But it cannot be told. We are informed that they did this or that, and the thing they did is to us what it would be if done by ourselves.
We are most vain of that which is least ourselves, of that which is acquired, put on, stuck in. It is not correct to say that a woman is vain of her beauty.
Controversy is demoralising. Never suffer yourself to become an advocate. Never rely on controversy to convince. Say what you have to say and leave it. Do it if you wish to persuade.