Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

by Annie Dillard

Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.