I know all the arguments of the thinkers that think otherwise--bishops,
and agnostics, and those sort of people. And knowing you were the greatest
living authority on the pessimist thinkers--'
"`All thinkers,' said Eames, `are pessimist thinkers.'
"After a patch of pause, not the first--for this depressing conversation
had gone on for some hours with alternations of cynicism and silence--
the Warden continued with his air of weary brilliancy: `It's all a question
of wrong calculation. The moth flies into the candle because he doesn't
happen to know that the game is not worth the candle. The wasp gets
into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him.
IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they want
to enjoy gin--because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too big
a price for it. That they never find happiness--that they don't even know
how to look for it--is proved by the paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness
of everything they do. Their discordant colours are cries of pain.
Look at the brick villas beyond the college on this side of the river.
There's one with spotted blinds; look at it! just go and look at it!'
"`Of course,' he went on dreamily, `one or two men see the sober
fact a long way off--they go mad.
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