...
So that how it can be that a stone, a plant, a star, can take on the burden of being; 
and how it is that a child can take on the burden of breathing; and how through so long 
a continuation and cumulation of the burden of each moment one on another, 
does any creature bear to exist, and not break utterly to fragments of nothing: 
these are matters too dreadful and fortitudes too gigantic to meditate long and not forever 
to worship.


-James Agee, from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men


(Thanks to Garrison Keillor's posts for reminding us this is Agee's birthday.)