NOT SPLINTER OR SHATTER

To write something which was of enduring beauty, this was the ambition of every writer: as it was the ambition of the joiner and architect and constructor of any kind. It was not the beauty but the endurance, for endurance was beautiful. It was also all that we could do. It was a consolation, even a high and positive joy, to make something true: some table, which, sat on, when it was ment only to be eaten off, would not splinter or shatter. It was not for the constructor that the beauty was made, but for the thing itself. 
(T. H. White | The Goshawk)