Irony ... May Be Defined As What

May You Be Ordinary, As The Poet Once Wished The New-born Baby.

There Is A German Word, Sehnsucht, Which Has No English Equivalent; It Means 'the Longing For Something'. It Has Romantic And Mystical Connotations; C.s. Lewis Defined It As The 'inconsolable Longing' In The Human Heart For 'we Know Not What'. It Seems Rather German To Be Able To Specify The Unspecifiable. The Longing For Something - Or, In Our Case, For Someone.

Remember The Botched Brothel-visit In L’education Sentimentale And Remember Its Lesson. Do Not Participate: Happiness Lies In The Imagination, Not The Act. Pleasure Is Found First In Anticipation, Later In Memory.

Grief Seems At First To Destroy Not Just All Patterns, But Also To Destroy A Belief That A Pattern Exists.

Does Character Develop Over Time? In Novels, Of Course It Does: Otherwise There Wouldn't Be Much Of A Story. But In Life? I Sometimes Wonder. Our Attitudes And Opinions Change, We Develop New Habits And Eccentricities; But That's Something Different, More Like Decoration. Perhaps Character Resembles Intelligence, Except That Character Peaks A Little Later: Between Twenty And Thirty, Say. And After That, We're Just Stuck With What We've Got. We're On Our Own. If So, That Would Explain A Lot Of Lives, Wouldn't It? And Also - If This Isn't Too Grand A Word - Our Tragedy.