“ Beauty hurts you. It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound that does not heal, a knife of flame. ”
Jack London, Martin Eden (1909). copy citation
| Author | Jack London |
|---|---|
| Source | Martin Eden |
| Topic | beauty pain |
| Date | 1909 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1056/1056-h/1056-h.htm |
Context
“What in hell’s success if it isn’t right there in your Stevenson sonnet, which outranks Henley’s ‘Apparition,’ in that ‘Love-cycle,’ in those sea-poems?
“It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, but in the doing of it. You can’t tell me. I know it. You know it. Beauty hurts you. It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound that does not heal, a knife of flame. Why should you palter with magazines? Let beauty be your end. Why should you mint beauty into gold? Anyway, you can’t; so there’s no use in my getting excited over it. You can read the magazines for a thousand years and you won’t find the value of one line of Keats.”
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