Sometimes, in our age of Twitter, Facebook, and How-Many-Comments-Do-I-Have-NOW, it’s easy to feel tragically under-appreciated by a lack of awe and adoration poured at your feet in terms of follows, likes, trackbacks and comment counts. That’s why I’m very grateful for the following thoughts by Herman Melville, written to Nathaniel Hawthorne within days of Moby-Dick‘s American publication:
… for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory—the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity.
[via Wikipedia.]