We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while t...here is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime's rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one's own growing inne...r self.... The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the de...ssert, a bit like meringue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When he bit that bud of her lower lip,... she started, shook a finger, arched her brow, and hissed, "Leave me alone, you fool," her eyes narrowing into slits. Whoever kisses such a haughty woman wins the drink of immortality. Those idiot gods churned the ocean for nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poor little men, poor little cocks! As soon as they're old enough, they swell their plumage to be conquerors.... If they only knew... that it's enough to be just a little bit wounded and sad in order to obtain everything without fighting for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you have ever watched an artist constructing with bits of cold stone a beautiful living picture you know that he works faithful...ly and carefully on the pattern from the wrong side and while he is working every inequality, every tint a little too dull is apparent to him as his picture grows, but he works on and on. And even when he finishes at last and looks down at the completed pattern he is not discouraged to see here a little crevice and there a little roughness, an open seam here, a tiny patch there where the bit of marble was too small. Now he pours his cement over it and smoothes [sic] it into every seam, and with faith puts his work to dry. Next day the pattern is turned and the perfect whole is given to view, needing only the polishing of a loving hand to make it ready to slip in place. So we should work faithfully on our pattern, cement it together with ourselves, and polish it with human kindness; and lo! the work slips into place seemingly a perfect whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety and Glow?--How could I possibly join them on to<...br />the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »