If You've Been Put In Your Place

Most Of The People In A War Never Fight For Even A Minute Though They Bear For Years And Die Forever. They Do Not Fight, But Only Starve, Only Suffer, Only Die: The Sum Of All This Passive Misery Is That Great Activity, War.

We Always Tend To Distrust Geniuses About Genius, As If What They Say Didn't Arouse Much Empathy In Us, Or As If We Were Waiting Till Some More Reliable Source Of Information Came Along...

Reality Is What We Want It To Be Or What We Do Not Want It To Be, But It Is Not Our Wanting Or Our Not Wanting That Makes It So.

An Intelligent Man Said That The World Felt Napoleon As A Weight, And That When He Died It Would Give A Great Oof Of Relief. This Is Just As True Of Byron, Or Of Such Byrons Of Their Days As Kipling And Hemingway: After A Generation Or Two The World Is Tired Of Being Their Pedestal, Shakes Them Of With An Oof, And Then - Hoisting Onto Its Back A New World-figure - Feels The Penetrating Satisfaction Of Having Made A Mistake All Its Own.

More And More People Think Of The Critic As An Indispensable Middle Man Between Writer And Reader, And Would No More Read A Book Alone, If They Could Help It, Than Have A Baby Alone.