So, a little
water may prevent a strong drink from burning throat and stomach. A
style that is too terse is as fatiguing as one that is too diffuse.
But when a passage is written a little long, with consciousness and
compunction but still deliberately, as what will probably be most
easy for the reader, it can hardly be called diffuse.
Difficulties in Art, Literature and Music
The difficult and the unintelligible are only conceivable at all in
virtue of their catching on to something less difficult and less
unintelligible and, through this, to things easily done and
understood. It is at these joints in their armour that difficulties
should be attacked.
Never tackle a serious difficulty as long as something which must be
done, and about which you see your way fairly well, remains undone;
the settling of this is sure to throw light upon the way in which the
serious difficulty is to be resolved. It is doing the What-you-can
that will best help you to do the What-you-cannot.
Arrears of small things to be attended to, if allowed to accumulate,
worry and depress like unpaid debts. The main work should always
stand aside for these, not these for the main work, as large debts
should stand aside for small ones, or truth for common charity and
good feeling. If we attend continually and promptly to the little
that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little
remains that we cannot do.
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