The extreme pleasure that we take in talking of ourselves should make us afraid of giving little pleasure to our listeners.
L'extrême plaisir que nous prenons à parler de nous-mêmes nous doit faire craindre de n'en donner guère à ceux qui nous écoutent.
"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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Monday, December 18, 2006
A Favorite Topic of Conversation
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims 314: