To The Receptive Soul The River Of

I Desire No Future That Will Break The Ties Of The Past.

Only Those Who Know The Supremacy Of The Intellectual Life──the Life Which Has A Seed Of Ennobling Thought And Purpose Within──can Understand The Grief Of One Who Falls From That Serene Activity Into The Absorbing Soul-wasting Struggle With Worldly Annoyances.

For My Part I Am Very Sorry For Him. It Is An Uneasy Lot At Best, To Be What We Call Highly Taught And Yet Not To Enjoy: To Be Present At This Great Spectacle Of Life And Never To Be Liberated From A Small Hungry Shivering Self--never To Be Fully Possessed By The Glory We Behold, Never To Have Our Consciousness Rapturously Transformed Into The Vividness Of A Thought, The Ardour Of A Passion, The Energy Of An Action, But Always To Be Scholarly And Uninspired, Ambitious And Timid, Scrupulous And Dimsighted.

But I Think It Is Hardly An Argument Against A Man's General Strength Of Character, That He Should Be Apt To Be Mastered By Love. A Fine Constitution Doesn't Insure One Against Small-pox Or Any Other Of Those Inevitable Diseases. A Man May Be Very Firm In Other Matters, And Yet Be Under A Sort Of Witchery From A Woman.

Ignorance ... Is A Painless Evil; So, I Should Think, Is Dirt, Considering The Merry Faces That Go Along With It.