The Magus

by John Fowles

Like all men not really up to their job, he was a stickler for externals and petty quotidian things; and in lieu of an intellect he had accumulated an armoury of capitalized key-words like Discipline and Tradition and Responsibility.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

I still fell for it, as one still falls for the oldest literary devices in the right hands and contexts.

I had forgotten that there are metaphors and metaphors, and that the greatest lyrics are very rarely anything but direct and unmetaphysical.