Henry James was our master of periphrasis--the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.
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Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changless perfection where lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) and the angles and cherubim and seraphim rotate in endless idiotic circles, like clockwork, about an equally inane and ludicrous - however roseate - Unmoved Mover. That particular painted fantasy of a realm beyond time and space which Aristotle and the Church Fathers tried to palm off on us has met, in modern times, only neglect and indifference, passing on into the oblivion it so richly deserved, while the Paradise of which I write and wish to praise is with us yet, the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real earth on which we stand.
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I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.
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Nobody has so many friends that he can afford to lose one.
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There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure.
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