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The thing that I most desire, in intercourse with other men and
women, is that they should talk frankly of themselves, their hopes
and fears, their beliefs and uncertainties. Yet how many people can
do that? Part of our English shyness is shown by the fact that
people are often curiously cautious about what they say, but
entirely indiscreet in what they write. The only books which
possess a real and abiding vitality are those in which personality
is freely and frankly revealed. Of course there are one or two
authors like Shakespeare who seem to have had a power of
penetrating and getting inside any personality, but, apart from
them, the books that go on being read and re-read are the books in
which one seems to clasp hands with a human soul.
I said many of these things to my friend, and he replied that he
thought I was probably right, but that he could not change his
opinion. He would not have had these letters published until all
the survivors were dead. He did not think that the people who liked
the book were actuated by good motives, but had merely a desire to
penetrate behind the due and decent privacies of life; and he would
have stopped the publication of such letters if he could, because
even if people liked them, it was not good for them to read them.
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