Do you still laugh sometimes? Do you know how to lose yourself completely all over again in a moment of elemental joy—because of a view of houses, a human atmosphere, a song, a bit of landscape, a piece of film: in short a piece of good warm life? It’s something I love so much in you.
[Simone Weil, from a letter to Albertine Thévenon]

My friend Lauren Greenspan may just have improved on Chesterton. She quoted to me, earlier tonight, a line from his essay “A Piece of Chalk” inTremendous Trifles, which, when I looked it up, ran like this:

“Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.”

But when Lauren quoted it, she said, “Chastity is not something tepid; is something burning, like Joan of Arc.” I think I’d keep “flaming.” But other than that I think Lauren’s version is not only an improvement, but an improvement precisely in the spirit of what G. K. meant.