noblest

“Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest,” the popular John Muir quote goes.

But that movie, for all its missteps, looks increasingly like the noblest of failures, a genuinely nervy, conceptually ambitious folly from which the director has now retreated to this movie’s safer, smugger climes.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius reputedly said, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

We must face up to the ugliest aspects of our history and also to its noblest and most inspiring words and deeds.

Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time’s noblest offspring is the last.