A Good Deal Of Education

I Suppose Everyone Continues To Be Interested In The Quest For The Self, But What You Feel When You're Older, I Think, Is That ... You Really Must Make The Self. It Is Absolutely Useless To Look For It, You Won't Find It, But It's Possible In Some Sense To Make It. I Don't Mean In The Sense Of Making A Mask, A Yeatsian Mask. But You Finally Begin In Some Sense To Make And Choose The Self You Want.

I Shall Never Send For A Priest Or Recite An Act Of Contrition In My Last Moments. I Do Not Mind If I Lose My Soul For All Eternity. If The Kind Of God Exists Who Would Damn Me For Not Working Out A Deal With Him, Then That Is Unfortunate. I Should Not Care To Spend Eternity In The Company Of Such A Person.

Is It Really So Difficult To Tell A Good Action From A Bad One? I Think One Usually Knows Right Away Or A Moment Afterward, In A Horrid Flash Of Regret.

The Breakdown Of Our Language, Evident In The Misuse, I.e., The Misunderstanding Of Nouns And Adjectives, Is Most Grave, Though Perhaps Not So Conspicuous, In The Handling Of Prepositions, Those Modest Little Connectives That Hold The Parts Of A Phrase Or A Sentence Together. They Are The Joints Of Any Language, What Make It, Literally, Articulate.

Laughter Is The Great Antidote For Self-pity, Maybe A Specific For The Malady, Yet Probably It Does Tend To Dry One's Feelings Out A Little, As If By Exposing Them To A Vigorous Wind.