We worship perfection because we can’t have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.
To achieve perfection would require a coldness foreign to man, and he would lose the human heart that makes him love perfection.
In awe we worship the impulse to perfection of great artists. We love their approximation to perfection, but we love it because it is only an approximation.
How tragic to believe in human perfectibility!
How tragic not to believe in it!
— Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (trans. R. Zenith)
from your postings i sent my son the book
a boy high in a tenement of edinburgh
i just wanted to say thank you
Hope he likes it, Marianne.