#tempest-tost

"I feel myself to be an angel, beating in ineffectual wings in vain against the granite fortress of your obtuse self-righteousness."

Allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge.  You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts.  I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt.  Shake the machine and it goes out of order, shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.

Nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.

It is a favourite notion of romantic young men that misery can be forgotten in work. If the work can be done late at night, all the better. And if the combination of misery and work can be brought together in an attic a very high degree of melancholy self-satisfaction may be achieved, for in spite of the supposed anti-romantic bias of our age the tradition of work, love, attics, drink and darkness is still powerful.