To burn always with the hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life [...] While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the sense, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.
(Walter Pater, as quoted in Bloom's "Genius", p.444)
Two funny Borges bits: One, a quasi-fictional essay by the translator of Borges's collected fictions, and Two, a short story that cutely synthesizes "El Zahir" and "Funes, El Memorioso", by noteworthy Kibologist and Perl-hacker Mark-Jason Dominus.
