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Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards,
if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
Ronald Reagan

LXXXII



I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o\'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book. 

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devis\'d,

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz\'d

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;

  And their gross painting might be better us\'d

  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus\'d.

 	--William Shakespeare

Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. Lewis, A preface to Paradise Lost

We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with
exalted personages -- stand quietly before them and wait until they speak
to us.
Arthur Schopenhauer