The Commonplace Is Crowded

From "The Betty Book," by Stewart Edward White (1937)

"Choose the companionship of inspiration wherever it feeds and nourishes, whether in the gift of dead poets or the sweating toil of living workers. Outside your hours of duty refresh and stimulate your thought chambers by constantly associating yourself with the aristocracy of the spirit wherever you can recognize it. There is always such a drag to the commonplace, such a vortex of it. You must continually guard yourself against it if you are going to maintain yourself above it. I am not saying there is anything wrong about it: I am only saying it is crowded. Our restricted imaginations, our semi-paralyzed wills, our spasmodic instead of habitual acknowledgement of the unknown -- by all these we keep ourselves commonplace."