A fact is a holy thing and ought not to be sacrificed on the altar of a generality.
"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 19, 2010
Reverence for Facts
Arthur Darby Nock, quoted in William M. Calder III, "Arthur Darby Nock 1902-1963," Classical Outlook 70 (1992) 8-9, rpt. in Men in Their Books: Studies in the Modern History of Classical Scholarship (Hildesheim: Olms, 1998), pp. 233-234 (at 234):