Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

(T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, Four Quartets)

hoi chan

The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. It is the same with the act of love. To know that this man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I do—that is enough, the rest follows of itself.

(Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 119)