Tangent: ... or maybe just performing some tiny act of charity when you're 58 years old that unbeknownst to you ends up saving someone's life. A tangent on the

Tangent: ... or maybe just performing some tiny act of charity when you're 58 years old that unbeknownst to you ends up saving someone's life. A tangent on the tangent: this reminds me of the following, which I just happened to come across a few hours ago -- the quote (and others) comes from a post[1] endeavoring to defend the man from charges of misanthropy, etc. -- from the letters of one H.P. Lovecraft [2]: About the time I joined the United I was none too fond of existence. I was 23 years of age, and realised that my infirmities would withhold me from success in the world at large. Feeling like a cipher, I felt that I might well be erased. But later I realised that even success is empty. Failure though I be, I shall reach a level with the greatest — and the smallest — in the damp earth or on the final pyre. And I saw that in the interim trivialities are not to be despised. Success is a relative thing — and the victory of a boy at marbles is equal to the victory of an Octavius at Actium when measured by the scale of cosmic infinity. That I have been able to cheer here and there and aged man, an infirm old lady, a dull youth, or a person deprived by circumstances of education, affords to me a sense of being not altogether useless, which almost forms a substitute for the real success I shall never know. What matter if none hear of my labours, or if those labours touch only the afflicted and the mediocre? Surely it is well that the happiness of the unfortunate be made as great as possible; and he who is kind, helpful, and patient, with his fellow-sufferers, adds as truly to the world’s combined fund of tranquillity as he who, with greater endowments, promotes the birth of empires, or advances the knowledge and civilisation of mankind. Thus no man of philosophical cast, however circumscribed by poverty or retarded by ailment, need feel himself superfluous so long as he holds the power to improve the spirits of others. [1] http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/cosmic-horror/ http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/cosmic-horror/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft