For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough wi… - Matthew Arnold

Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.