Literature has a high mission to perform in these awful times. For it can bless us with mental peace amid the outward turmoil of alarms and chaotic situations. It can console us with philosophic reflections about the fundamental objectives of life amid the agonies of personal loss and illness, and it can keep alive the lofty ideals of goodwill and tolerance in an era when hatred and violence have bulked so largely before our eyes. It is through great writings that so many mystics and thinkers of bygone centuries have legated a golden record of their aspirations, a sublime catalogue of their dreams, a motley manifestation of their spiritual impulses, and a factual document of their celestial traffics. These bygone men and women passed the torch of knowledge and inspiration from one generation to another until we find it ready for our own hands today. It is our privilege and duty not only to look for the flaming torch but to bear it, and not only to bear it but so to cherish it that it shall burn ever more brightly still, when, in the days to come, a new generation will succeed to its possession.
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections > Chapter 4 : Reflections On Truth > # 105
