The ever-improving path

Sometimes the coincidence of conversations and seemingly random Web or book browsing is just too, well, coincidental. A quote from A Circle of Quiet:

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path... But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

*Winston Churchill*

"Ever-improving"—either the path itself or the effects of the path on the person climbing it.