God's finger on your shoulder

“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder.” – Charles Morgan

Born on this date in 1894, Morgan was an English playwright and novelist whose main writing themes were – as he himself put it – "Art, Love, and Death,” and the relationship between them.

While Morgan enjoyed an immense reputation during his lifetime, particularly in France, and was awarded the 1940 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, he was sometimes criticized for “excessive seriousness” in his writing.  

A poet first, following a time in the military during World War I, he gravitated to novels and playwriting, including the best selling novels The Fountain and The Voyage – for which he won the Tait Black Prize – and his scripts for theater, The Flashing Stream and The Burning Glass.

When not writing for himself, he did many reviews and was highly regarded as a critic.  He also did a number of major essays, including the thought provoking “The Writer and His World,” published shortly after his death in 1958.

Always seeming somewhat surprised by his successes, he once noted, “As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.”

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