Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn On whose gray surface runes are tr… - Philip José Farmer

Then she warned her self—for the ten thousandth time?—that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment.

Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless
Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive
Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact
Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press
Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive
From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.