“We may compare a human-being to a fruit-tree whose purpose is its fruit, fruit out of all proportion to the tree’s value; yet, unless the tree receives its years of leisure, its requirements of sun and rain, the fruit will not ripen. So it is with the spiritual virtues of man, for we have divided man into two kinds: those whose soil is so poor or the climate of whose lives so unsuitable that they can never bear, or those who are forced and cramped under glass, whose lives are so constricted by responsibility that they become all fruit; hasty, artificial and without flavour.”
— Cyril Connolly
BEATING THE POISONED DRUM 