Genius is the surmounting of known limits. It shows us something that was always there but not yet seen. But genius often sees the idea long before trial and error can settle the mechanical means for harnessing that potential. Thus the vision of genius can be clear, while its journey toward proof is nonetheless fraught with failure and disappointment. So be careful who you admire or envy. A man without regrets may only be someone content with a lower awareness of potential.
A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387
387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood. To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process . In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism