“I don't say that it is a bad or useless profession: but it isn't one of the superlatively fine and striking ones, and the material used is of a strange sort — you don't even see it. But I'd like all the things I used to see to be in it: the ringing hammer-strokes of the smith and the colors of the whisping of the stone-mason, the bustling of the baker, the humility of the poor, and all the lusty strength and skill which men of towering stature put into their work before the astonished and fascinated eyes of a child.”

—  Karel Čapek

"On Literature" in Toward the Radical Center : A Karel Čapek Reader (1990) http://www.catbirdpress.com/bookpages/reader.htm, edited by Peter Kussi

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Karel Čapek 51
Czech writer 1890–1938

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