A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology. To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself. For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian. No man ever quite believes in any other man Every man is his own hell But any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood, and that is what happened to Jesus The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. Enchantment may be a state of rapture and ecstasy in which the soul comes to the foreground, and the literal concerns of survival and daily preoccupation at least momentarily fade into the background. |