Wednesday, July 04, 2007

 

I Have Searched

In Port-Royal, vol. 5 (Paris: Hachette, 1878), p. 257, Saint-Beuve attributes the following sentence to Thomas à Kempis, Imitatio Christi:
In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

In all things I have searched for rest, and nowhere have I found it except in a corner with a book.
George Gissing repeats the attribution in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1903), p. 51, and so does Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose (1980), tr. William Weaver (1983; rpt. New York: Warner Books, 1984), p. 5.

But I have searched everywhere in the Imitatio, and nowhere have I found this sentence.



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