The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before; though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left God not for gods, they say, but for no gods; and this has never happened before. That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, and the money, and power, and what they call life, or race, or dialect.The church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms upturned in an age which advances progressively backwards?
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience ?in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.
We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.