In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.

What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.