"Give exceeding thanks for the mystery which remains a mystery still -- the veil that hides you from the infinite, which makes it possible for you to believe in what you cannot see." ~ Robert Nathan
Born on this day in New York City, novelist and poet Robert Gruntal Nathan (1894-1985) wrote of beauty and mystery with sensitive grace.
"Sorrow is a silence in the heart," he believed and wrote words that celebrated humanity. Nathan brought hope and optimism during the Great Depression and sustained a long, successful career.
"Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting," he wrote in the poem Beauty Is Ever to the Lonely Mind. "She is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain."
The popular romantic novelist's best-known work was Portrait of Jennie (1940), a haunting, supernatural love story, which became a classic 1948 film starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten.
The highly-respected writer had a long and prolific career. He created some of the finest screenplays of his time at MGM studios in the 1940s, an age of innocence and literacy.
His Enchanted Voyage was adapted for the screen as Wake Up and Dream; The Bishop's Wife (1948, w/Cary Grant), was remade into 1996's The Preacher's Wife (w/ Denzel Washington).
"There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday," he said.
