The Flaming Walls of the World

A feeling of something portentous and strange in human experience had been gathering within him. He felt as though he had walked all his life in ignorance of abysses and wonders, of ambushes, of eyes watching him, of writing on clouds. It came to him that surely life is vaster, deeper, and more perilous than we think it is. He was suddenly filled with fear that he would go through life ignorant—stump ignorant—of the power of light and the powers of darkness that were engaged in some mighty conflict behind the screen of appearances—fear, fear that he would live like a slave, or like a four-footed thing with lowered head.

—Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day, p. 427.