I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.
Once, Tesla paid a hotel bill with a box that he claimed had a death ray inside, so they couldn't open it or else it would detonate. After his death, they found out there was just a spare electrical part.
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
