Life is too short to wasteEmerson's phrase cynic bark is pregnant with meaning. Dogs bark, and cynic comes from Greek kynikós (κυνικός, dog-like), itself from kýon (κύων, dog).
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand:
'T will soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!
"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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Saturday, August 27, 2005
Vita Brevis
Ralph Waldo Emerson, To J.W.: