I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself. Sometimes I am so clever I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
In this country, unfortunately, as all over the world, we care so little, we have no deep feeling about anything. Most of us are intellectual-intellectuals in the superficial sense of being very clever, full of words and theories about what is right and what is wrong, about how we should think, what we should do. Mentally we are highly developed, but inwardly there is very little substance or significance; and it is this inward substance that brings about true action, which is not action according to an idea.
A mind that is always comparing, always measuring, will always engender illusion. If I am measuring myself against you, who are clever, more intelligent, I am struggling to be like you and I am denying myself as I am. I am creating an illusion.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.