Laughing at our woes is the only profit we can gain from them, and the only remedy to be found in them.
"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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Friday, February 23, 2007
Profit and Loss
Giacomo Leopardi, The Moral Essays. Operette Morali. Translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh = Works of Giacomo Leopardi, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 184 (from The Dialogue of Timander and Eleander):