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the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell and so forth—it
“I believe that having a great diversity of teachers is harmful and confusing for a young mind, in the same way I believe that it is better to know one book intimately that a hundred superficially,”
Work?” he said to me once, astonished, when I referred to our classroom activities as such. “Do you really think that what we do is work?” “What else should I call it?” “I should call it the most glorious kind of play.”)
“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?
let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
That fire of pure being.”
It never occurred to me to be offended; this was Bunny, my friend, who had even less pocket money than I did and a big rip in the seat of his trousers besides. A good deal of my horror at his new behavior sprang from the fact that it was so similar to the old and frankly endearing way he used to tease me, and I was as baffled and enraged at his sudden departure from the rules as though—if we had been in the habit of doing a little friendly sparring—he had boxed me into the corner and beaten me half to death.
Nihil sub sole novum, I thought as I walked back down the hall to my room. Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.
“I never realized, you know, how much we rely on appearances,” he said. “It’s not that we’re so smart, it’s just that we don’t look like we did it.
Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.
don’t know where Henry was. Probably looking at the moon and reciting some poem from the T’ang Dynasty.”
“About a Hindu saint being able to slay a thousand on the battlefield and it not being a sin unless he felt remorse.”
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.
She closed her eyes, dark-lidded, dark shadows beneath them; she really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses, than tore at my very heart.
