The Way To Perfection Is

Why Do You Always Write Poetry? Why Do You Not Write Prose? Prose Is So Much More Difficult.

To Higher Or Lower Ends, They [the Majority Of Mankind] Move Too Often With Something Of A Sad Countenance, With Hurried And Ignoble Gait, Becoming, Unconsciously, Something Like Thorns, In Their Anxiety To Bear Grapes; It Being Possible For People, In The Pursuit Of Even Great Ends, To Become Themselves Thin And Impoverished In Spirit And Temper, Thus Diminishing The Sum Of Perfection In The World, At Its Very Sources.

A Book, Like A Person, Has Its Fortunes With One; Is Lucky Or Unlucky In The Precise Moment Of Its Falling In Our Way, And Often By Some Happy Accident Counts With Us For Something More Than Its Independent Value.

The Various Forms Of Intellectual Activity Which Together Make Up The Culture Of An Age, Move For The Most Part From Different Starting-points, And By Unconnected Roads.

Books Are A Refuge, A Sort Of Cloistral Refuge, From The Vulgarities Of The Actual World.