July 6, 2008: Williams on Caesar - 0 Comments

"'Caesar,' Considine answered, ' knew of it. I am sure he did. This man who had so many lovers, who could bear all hardships and use all comfort, who was not athlete or lover or general or statesman or writer, but only those because he was Caesar, who founded not a dynasty but a civilization, whose children we are, who dreamed of travelling to the sources of the Nile and sailed out to the strangeisland whither the Gallic boatmen rowed the souls of the dead, who was lord of all minds and natures, didn't he dream of other waters and set sail living for a land where the spirits of other men are but helplessly driven? Rule the world? He was the world; he mastered it; the power that is in it burned in him and he knew it; he was one with it.'"

- Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy, 1950

I love that man-of-the-world phrase, 'could bear all hardships and use all comfort.'