Whatever Quotes (page 97)
People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.
W. H. Auden
A work of (whatever) art can either be 'received' or 'used'. When we 'receive' it we expert our senses and imagination and various other powers according the the pattern set by the artist. When we 'use' it, we treat it as assistance for our own activities. The one, to use an old-fashioned image, is like being taken for a bicycle ride by a man who may know roads we have not yet explored. The other is like adding one of those little motor attachments to our own bicycle and then going for one of...
C. S. Lewis
Someone knocked me down; I pushed Brinker over a small slope; someone was trying to tackle me from behind. Everywhere there was the smell of vitality in clothes, the vital something in wool and flannel and corduroy which spring releases. I had forgotten that this existed, this smell which instead of the first robin, or the first bud or leaf, means to me that spring has come. I had always welcomed vitality and energy and warmth radiating from thick and sturdy winter clothes. It made me happy,...
John Knowles