“Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, / And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire, / Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, / So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.” Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in. A Room of One's Own

"To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle." The Analects of Confucius

If I had a humble spirit in my service who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that my pleasure consists, not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way. Either/Or