This law is the very essence of the kind of composition in which every idea is modified passing through the medium of an imaginative mind. To this fundamental law every other regulation is subordinate. Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. The greater part of the world's creative work is done by those who subsist by some other occupation.
Science today is vigorous partly because research and teaching go well together.
In the fine arts it is not easy to make a living by really good work, and it is equally as hard to find an occupation that leaves leisure time for creation. Think not so much of what thou hast, but of the things which thou hast select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. People often write better than they live. They propose their schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear. They are in the same state with those who teach navigation upon the land, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind always propitious.