Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/58

 Is there no kinetic and flowing character—no form imposable upon wind and water: such form as the cloud takes in the West, such color; such shapes as life transiently rests in, rising from seed to blossom?

Come, let us make a new set of maxims, not for youths in their twenties with houses to build and children to educate, but for men of forty and upwards who are growing tired of one another and yet are not quite ready to die:

Unfold, leaf by leaf.

Become more and more intimate with life.

Ask no cold question of any joyous thing.

Go to all living things gently, listening for the wonder of the breath and the heartbeat.

Ask all successful and happy creatures for a clue.

Study all lovely things, with docility seeking their principle of beauty.

Consider whether it is better to change and be living than to be unchanged and dead.

Eschew pedantry and make much of fine art: it possesses a secret of eternal life.

Be your residence urban or rural, there is no provincialism so narrow as that developed by the inveterate maintenance of your own point of view.

Push on into untrodden forests, up unexplored valleys, seeking new springs of refreshment, crying at the foot of every mountain ridge, "Let us see what is on the other side."