“The gift of self cannot be given to us. It is an incomparable gift that has already been given.”

Denver, Colorado, February 19, 1977
1970s

Source: Princess on the Brink

Canto V, stanza 13.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)
Context: True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

Source: And the Mountains Echoed (2013)

Source: Acheron

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Context: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.

Original: Perdere le persone allontanatesi dalla vostra vita in un momento molto difficile, è il regalo più utile ed importante che potessero farvi.
Source: prevale.net

Book I, ch. 41 (p. 47)
The Ladder of Perfection (1494)