Joseph Wood Krutch on quality versus quantity

    In defense of Thomas Gray’s spending his lifetime for making a few excellent poems rather than many average ones, Joseph Wood Krutch wrote:

Can one accuse of ineffectiveness or of waste a man who writes even one immortal poem? (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 330.)

These words contain the solution to every problem of society – from the problem of education to the problem of global warming, from the problem of overrunning the planet with people to the problem of the Forest Service – every problem.

    For a brief biography of Joseph Wood Krutch, click here. For a brief biography of Thomas Gray, click here.

Comments

[Michael Jablonski]

The Saunterer is right. The pursuit of excellence by everyone, each day, would solve so many problems. Instead, as Philip Adams has said, ”It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever."