“Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.”

— Joseph Addison

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

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Joseph Addison 226

politician, writer and playwright 1672–1719

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“Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 225.
The Tatler (1711–1714)
Context: Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

“Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Epilogue
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
Context: Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.

“Richard Wright’s outstanding characteristics are two seemingly opposite tendencies. One is an overwhelming need for association and integration with humanity at large. The other is a tragic, highly individualized loneliness. Except that he is a Negro in 20th century America he might have been a lyric poet. Whenever he describes the life he wants for mankind he rises to great heights of lyric beauty. At the same time when he doubts that a new life can ever be achieved he writes with the same beauty but in tragic despair. Wright wants a new world; men working freely together in social relationships that not only realize a complete personality but develop every potential and result in new associations and new men altogether. He wants to share a common life, not in a regimented sense but in a free interchange of ideas and experience; a relationship which will be the blending of a common belief and a solidarity of ideals. He wants a life in which basic emotions are shared; in which common memory forms a common past; in which collective hope reflects a national future. He has a vision of life where man can reveal his destiny as man by grappling with the world and getting from it the satisfactions he feels he must have. He wants a life where man’s inmost nature and emotional capacities will be used. He has a passionate longing to belong, to be identified with the world at large; he wants the "deep satisfaction of doing a good job in common with others."”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

He doesn’t want a society where he is separate as Negro, but one where he is just another man.
Constance Webb, "Notes preliminary to a full study of the work of Richard Wright" (privately published, 1946)