I Quote Another Man's Saying; Unluckily, That

What Is The Foundation Of That Interest All Men Feel In Greek History, Letters, Art, And Poetry, In All Its Periods, From The Heroic Or Homeric Age Down To The Domestic Life Of The Athenians And Spartans, Four Or Five Centuries Later? What But This, That Every Man Passes Personally Through A Grecian Period.

Every Spirit Builds Itself A House; And Beyond Its House A World; And Beyond Its World, A Heaven. Know Then, That The World Exists For You. For You Is The Phenomenon Perfect. What We Are, That Only Can We See. All That Adam Had, All That Caesar Could, You Have And Can Do. Adam Called His House, Heaven And Earth; Caesar Called His House, Rome; You Perhaps Call Yours, A Cobler's Trade; A Hundred Acres Of Ploughed Land; Or A Scholar's Garret. Yet Line For Line And Point For Point, Your Dominion Is As Great As Theirs, Though Without Fine Names. Build, Therefore, Your Own World.

We Gain The Strength Of The Temptation We Resist.

There Is Then Creative Reading As Well As Creative Writing. When The Mind Is Braced By Labor And Invention, The Page Of Whatever Book We Read Becomes Luminous With Manifold Allusion. Every Sentence Is Doubly Significant, And The Sense Of Our Author Is As Broad As The World.

The Whole Value Of History, Of Biography, Is To Increase My Self-trust, By Demonstrating What Man Can Be And Do.