'We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it at all.' - William James, a Pluralistic Universe.
'... A man's vision is the great fact about him. Who cares for Carlyle's reasons, or Schopenhaucer's, or Spencer's? A philosophy is the expansion of a man's intimate character, and all definitions of the Universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions of human character upon it.' - Ibid
There are certain persons who, independently of sex or comeliness, arouse an instant curiosity concerning themselves. The tribe is small, but its members unmistakable. They may possess neither fortune, good looks, nor that adroitness of advance-vision which the stupid name good-luck; yet there is about them this inciting quality which proclaims that they have overtaken Fate, set a harness about its neck of violence, and hold bit and bridle in steady hands.
Most of us, arrested a moment by their presence to snatch the definition their peculiarity exacts, are aware that on the heels of curiosity follows - envy. They know the very things that we for ever seek in vain. And this diagnosis, achieved as it were en passant, comes near to the truth, for the hall-mark of such persons is that they have found, and come into, their own. There is a sign upon the face and in the eyes.
