This knowledge can teach us, perhaps, to avoid mistakes, or can make us
ashamed of not being better than we are; or, best of all, it may lead
us to love and pity those who are like ourselves, to bear their burdens
when we can, to comfort, to help. I think it would be far better if we
could talk more simply and openly to each other of our hopes and
fears--what we love, what we dread, what we avoid. The saddest thing in
the world is to feel that we are alone; the best thing in the world is
to feel that we are loved and needed.
However, as things are, the sad fact remains that in common talk we
speak of knowing a man whom we have met and spoken to a dozen times,
while it would never occur to us to use the word of a man whose books
we might have read a dozen times and yet never have seen; though as
matter of fact we know the latter's real mind, or a part of it, while
we may only know the healthy or pathetic face of the former.
If we make writing the business of our lives, it will be necessary to
give up many things for it, things which are held to be the prizes of
the world--position, station, wealth--or, rather, to give up the
pursuit of these things; probably, indeed, if we really love our art we
shall be glad enough to give up what we do not care about for a thing
about which we do care. But there will be other things to be given up
as well, which we may not like resigning, and one of these things is
the multiplication of pleasant relations with other people, which
cannot indeed be called friendships, but which rank high among the easy
pleasures of life.
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