Stanley Cavell on the vanity of worldliness

Despite Mendel’s* authority and talent, and his capacity to paint the day with fun, I felt about him an air, or skin, of privacy, a perpetual reticence even in his grand laughter, registering a perception that the world held less of value than it promised. I adored him.

*Mendel was an uncle of Cavell’s.

from Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory, (Stanford, 2010)