Writing Rite

     Purely formal criticism of Sophocles, by rule, is an impertinence. "All arts aspire to the condition of music"; what this means was illustrated by (I think) Schumann. He was once asked by a man who had just heard him play one of his compositions what it meant. "I will tell you," said Schumann, and he played it again. the form was the meaning; and so it is with Sophocles until it is shown that he was incapable of expressing himself properly. Any fool could "improve" the Ajax, but only by making it mean something that Sophocles thought not worth saying. The diastrous notion that the artist is one who makes pretty things has been "the beginning of many evils to the Greeks."
— H.D.F. Kitto, "Middle Tragedy: Sophocles," in The Proper Study: Essays on Western Classics, Anderson & Mazzeo (eds.), p. 86.

     The natural human tendency towards forgetfulness and confusion normally produces error, but in poets it may produce poetic truth. Their unconscious mind is full, not only of imaginative impressions, but also of a latent reason. The "hooked atoms" combine according to it. The reason in it all is missed, because it is too quick, and too compressed and elliptic. Poets seem to talk nonsense because they talk so much truth all at the same time.
— Matthew Arnold, "An Essay on Marcus Aurelius," in Ibid., p. 199.

     (A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing; — Every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught; — Our improvement is in proportion to our purpose; — We hardly ever manage to get completely rid of one fault, and do not set our hearts on daily improvement; — Always place a definite purpose before thee; — Get the habit of mastering thine inclination.)
— Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, in Ibid., pp. 227-228.

     What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? Art thou not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking?
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, in Ibid., p. 239.

     A bird rose over their heads with a leaping flight that made it seem as though its black was bouncing against the bright sky. The foolish noise and motion precipitated their thoughts. They were broken into a new conception of life. They perceived that God is war and his creatures are meant to fight. When dogs walk through the world cats must climb trees. The virgin must snare the wanton, the fine lover must put the prude to the sword. The gross man of action walks, spurred on the bloodless bodies of the men of thought, who lie quiet and cunningly do not tell him where his grossness leads him. The flesh must smother the spirit, the spirit must set the flesh on fire and watch it burn. And those who were gentle by nature and shrank from the ordained brutality were betrayers of their kind, surrendering the earth to the seed of their enemies. In this war there is no discharge. If they succumbed to peace now, the rest of their lives would be dishonorable, like the exile of a rebel who has begged his life as the reward of cowardice. It was their first experience of religious passion, and they abandoned themselves to it so that their immediate personal qualities fell away from them. Neither his weakness nor her prudence stood in the way of the event.
— Rebecca West, "Indissoluble Matrimony," in Blast I, Wyndham Lewis (ed.), p. 110.