Loose Papers · a short reading

--Let us come to the main point. Once you have entered the career, you must take all care in the ideas you have to nurture for use by others and for yourself. The best would be not to have them at all; you will understand this well, imagining, for example, an actor deprived of the use of an arm. He can, by a miracle of artific e, disguise the defect from the eyes of the audience; but it would be much better to have both. The same happens with ideas; one can, with force, suppress them, hide them even unto death; but neither that skill is common, nor would such constant effort suit the exercise of life.