It's the luck of a lifetime if once you are shown the whole
breadth and depth of your fear. For any act of will merely
suppresses it. It goes automatic and the will is an imposture.
When you become aware of, instead of symbolifying, your
fear, what is real in your character remains, and the rest
falls away, leaving very little perhaps--a child of six, or
three (but in any case it seems negligible next to the
infinite--)...and you can then start to build, not a tower
toward heaven, but a house to live in. To realize you are
finite and perishable, comes not from having said it a
thousand times, but from having been--briefly--perished
and infinite... The zero that begins a life of measure.

"It has been said that Pater composed his best sentences,
without any relation to the context, and then inserted them
where they would be most effective." --Thomas Wright,
Life of Pater (1907)

"And now that a half million people have read me, what
does it mean? About two dozen people are all I really
count as understanding admirers. It was worth winning
them perhaps. Perhaps." --Henry Miller to Lawrence Durrell

"He [Porphyry] firmly believed in oracles, but took the
Pythagorean view that the true gods required only the
sacrifice of the heart, and that the demons alone longed
for the smoke of blood." --Raby, op cit