Good men do the most harm. - Henry Brooks Adams

He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.

Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often succeeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that Infinity can make itself finite or that Space can make itself bounds or that Eternity can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily as though he were writing any other miracle.

Naturally man tended to lose his sense of scale and relation. A straight line, or a combination of straight lines, may have still a sort of artistic unity, but what can be done in art with a series of negative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the artist might express at least a negation; but supposing that Omar's kinetic analogy of the ball and the players turned out to be a scientific formula! supposing that the highest scientific authority, in order to obtain any unity at all, had to resort to the middle-ages for an imaginary demon to sort his atoms! how could art deal with such problems, and what wonder that art lost unity with philosophy and science! Art had to be confused in order to express confusion; but perhaps it was truest, so.