Who Among You Ponders These Things?

[Posted by reader_iam]

“Ordinary people think that talent must be always on its own level and that it arises every morning like the sun, rested and refreshed, ready to draw from the same storehouse / always open, always full, always abundant / new treasures that it will heap up on those of the day before; such people are unaware that, as in the case of all mortal things, talent has its increase and decrease, and that independently of the career it takes, like everything that breathes... it undergoes all the accidents of health, of sickness, and of the dispositions of the soul / its gaiety or its sadness. As with our perishable flesh. Talent is obliged constantly to keep guard over itself, to combat, and to keep perpetually on the alert amid the obstacles that witness the exercise of its singular power.”

And in the spirit of this:

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”

Or, you know--whatever.

(Yeah, I know that I didn't source these quotes. Not standard procedure, for me. Why could that be?)