Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Rereading
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 2.4 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):
Jacob Henry Sablet (1749–1803), Vieillard assis et lisant, in
Musée des beaux-arts, Nantes, numéro d'inventaire 696
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So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before.C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (New York: HBJ, 1967), p. 17:
probatos itaque semper lege, et si quando ad alios deverti libuerit, ad priores redi.
An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristram Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he 'has read' them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?
Musée des beaux-arts, Nantes, numéro d'inventaire 696
