I never know what I do feel. -- I don't think that matters, provided one doesn't try to persuade one's self into appropriate feelings. - D.L. Sayers
2008, March 12
All mankind is of one author
From Devotion 17, by John Donne
...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
