Human life is sort of like iron. If you use iron, it wears out. But if you don't use it, rust nevertheless ruins it. Likewise we see men worn out by use. But if you don't use your body, laziness and inactivity exact a worse toll than use.
vita humana prope uti ferrum est; si exerceas, conteritur. si non exerceas, tamen rubigo interfecit. item homines exercendo videmus conteri. si nihil exerceas, inertia atque torpedo plus detrimenti facit quam exercitio.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, August 26, 2004
Use It Or Lose It
Cato, quoted by Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 11.2.6: