Mentors and Critics

  " The only critic who helps me is the critic whose humility keeps pace with his acuteness, who leads me gently where he has himself trodden patiently and observantly, and does not attempt to disfigure and ravage the regions which he has not been able to desire to explore.

The man who will show me unsuspected connections, secret paths of thought, who will teach me how to extend my view, how I may pass quietly from the known to the unknown; who will show me that stars and flowers have voices, and that running water has a quiet spirit of its own; this is the interpreter and guide whom I would welcome, even if he know but a little more than myself; but if my guide is infallible and disdainful, if he denies what I cannot see and derides what he has never felt, then I feel that I have but one enemy the more, in a place where I am beset with foes." Arthur Benson.