If Geniuses Can Sometimes Make Mistakes, Cannot

While Reading Writers Of Great Formulatory Power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I Find I Can Scarcely Get Through A Page Without Having To Stop To Record Some Lapidary Sentence. Reading Henry James, For Example, I Have Muttered To Myself, "c’mon, Henry, Turn Down The Brilliance A Notch, So I Can Get Some Reading Done." I May Be One Of A Very Small Number Of People Who Have Developed Writer’s Cramp While Reading.

What, Really, Is Wanted From A Neighborhood? Convenience, Certainly, An Absence Of Major Aggravation, To Be Sure. But Perhaps Mostof All, Ideally, What Is Wanted Is A Comfortable Background, A Breathing Space Of Intermission Between The Intensities Of Private Life And The Calculations Of Public Life.

Culture Means, I Think, That You Have Widened Your Experience Enough Through Reading And Through Being A Little Bit Thoughtful About These Things That It Has Changed Your Outlook In Some Ways. And Not Necessarily Made You A Better Human Being But Made You See Things.

We Do Choose How We Shall Live

We Do Not Choose To Be Born.we Do Not--most Of Us, Choose To Die, Or The Times Or Conditions Of Our Death. But Within All This Realm Of Choicelessness, We Do Choose How We Shall Live--courageously Or In Cowardice, Honorably Or Dishonorably, With Purpose Or Adrift. We Decide What Is Important And What Is Trivial. What Makes Us Significant Is What We Do, Or Refuse To Do. We Decide And We Choose--and So We Give Definition To Our Lives.