Northrope Frye

As nothing is certain or permanent in the world, nothing either real or unreal,the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal. All goals and aims may cheat us, but if we run away from them we shall find ourselves bumping into them . . .

As soon as we renounce the expectation of reward, in however refined a guise, for virtue or wisdom, we relax and our real energies begin to flow into the soul . . . .

We see too how the primitive form of wisdom, using past experience as a balancing pole for walking the tightrope of life, finally grows, through incessant discipline and practice, into the final freedom of movement, where, in Yeat's phrase, we can no longer tell the dancer from the dance.

Northrope Frye, from The Great Code