The Greatest Obstacle To Pleasure Is Not

First Of All, There Was A Volcano Of Words, An Eruption Of Words That Shakespeare Had Never Used Before That Had Never Been Used In The English Language Before. It's Astonishing. It Pours Out Of Him.

I Was In Venice Teaching, So I Reread Henry James's "the Wings Of The Dove." I Love James.

A Comparably Capacious Embrace Of Beauty And Pleasure - An Embrace That Somehow Extends To Death As Well As Life, To Dissolution As Well As Creation - Characterizes Montaigne's Restless Reflections On Matter In Motion, Cervantes's Chronicle Of His Mad Knight, Michelangelo's Depiction Of Flayed Skin, Leonardo's Sketches Of Whirlpools, Caravaggio's Loving Attention To The Dirty Soles Of Christ's Feet.

The Greatest Obstacle To Pleasure Is Not Pain; It Is Delusion.

Compared To The Unleashed Forces Of Warfare And Of Faith, Mount Vesuvius Was Kinder To The Legacy Of Antiquity.