An Echo (n.) dwells in solitude and repeats exactly every sound, even the least — so God repeats, with the intensification of infinity, every word of grace or judgment you say about another, now said about you.
An Echo (n.) is a very quiet lodger, but no owner is the better for it in rent.
The Echo (n.) is heard first in the distress of having no distress: an age of machination so sure of itself that it feels nothing missing, and that very numbness is where being's abandonment rings back.
The Echo (n.) is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.
The Imitation of Christ (n.) is the opposite of what the adept underwent: he assimilated the Christ-image to his own self, not by effort but by an involuntary experience that came on him like stigmata.
The Imitation of Christ (n.) would mean, in a deeper sense, the duty to realize one's own deepest conviction with the courage and self-sacrifice Jesus showed, each in his own way.
The Imitation of Christ (n.) carried to completion would make man his own redeemer — or Christ would replace the believer's personality; so it can never be complete.
The Imitation of Christ (n.) turned into outward worship leaves man untouched inside: one can copy Christ down to the stigmata without coming anywhere near the ideal.
Impersonation (n.) has a slow middle cousin in modelling: the sculptor's hands are a mould that keeps moving, halfway between the brick press that fixes form once and the valve that reshapes it every instant.
Parody (n.) strips the great past of its superstition: a Napoleon beside a Montagne proved both were lifeless caricatures of the realities whose names they bore.
Parody (n.) ridicules a thought by making something ridiculous out of it — as the dream-work does, and as Heine mocked a king's bad verses with worse ones.
Parody (n.) is distinguished from satire in that satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
Parody (n.) is originality in a second-hand suit.