Most of the world would be surprised to know how few of our thoughts are really original with ourselves. What we write and say is, for the most part, a kind of mosaic interweaving of ideas and recollections gathered together out of other people’s talk or books. The combination and rearrangement of them is about all we can call our own. When a man does really evolve an original thought out of his own mind, it is the exception, rather than the rule. It is usually the fruit, either of patient study, or of fresh and vivid experience.
Bas Relief of Christ
c. 1859
Bas Relief: Head of Christ, copy of Ecce Homo by Guido, thought to have been brought back from Rome by William Henry Seward in 1859 for his wife. Found in attic and replaced in library wall in 1953. Ecce Homo means “Behold the man”, and were the words from Pontius Pilot used to present Jesus to the crowd in Nazareth before his crucifixion.
