All literature, from Job and Omar Khayam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman, is but an attempt to look upon the human state with such largeness of view as shall enable us to rise from the consideration of living to the Definition of Life.

从《约伯记》和奥马尔·海亚姆，到托马斯·卡莱尔或沃尔特·惠特曼，一切文学都在尝试以足够开阔的眼光审视人的处境，使我们从思考如何生活，进而追问生命的定义。