To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. - Aldous Huxley

It is only by poets that the life of any epoch can be synthesized. Encyclopaedias and guides to knowledge cannot do it, for the good reason that they affect only the intellectual surface of a man’s life. The lower layers, the core of his being, they leave untouched.

Mon Dieu, la vie est par trop moche.

Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be
done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of
hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the
precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.