Correspondence #4

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, how wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.

Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim


One never knows a human being, but one occasionally ceases to feel that one does not know him.

Andre Malraux
Man's Fate

Han Shao Gong on the nature of language

Words have lives of their own. They proliferate densly, endlessly transform, gather and scatter for short bursts, drift along without mooring, shift and intermingle, sicken and live on, have personalities and emotions, flourish, even die out.

Fragments 191 ~ 195

191

The three greatest expository prose stylists in the language are R.G. Collingwood, W.H. Auden and Iris Murdoch. The runners up are George Steiner, Bertrand Russell and H.A. L. Fisher.

192

The three greatest nature poets in the language after Shakespeare are Dylan Thomas, Gerald Manly Hopkins and John Clare. A close runner up is Ted Hughes.

193

The three greatest metaphysical poets in the language after Shakespeare are Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden and John Donne. A runner up is Emily Dickinson.

194

The three greatest lyric poets in the language after Shakespeare are John Keats, W.H. Auden and Lawrence Durrell. Distant runners up are Phillip Larkin and Douglas Dunne.

195

The three greatest linguistic artists in the language are Shakespeare, Dickens, and James Joyce. Milton is the closest runner up.

Henry Adams on the impossibility of objectivity

One sees what one brings.