These are sad times. Twenty times a day do we ask ourselves if it is worth while living to be present at the downfall of all that we have loved.
Les temps sont tristes. Vingt fois par jour nous nous demandons s'il vaut la peine de vivre pour assister à la ruine de tout ce que nous avons aimé.
"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, August 14, 2017
Sad Times
Ernest Renan (1823-1892), "First Dialogue: Certitudes," Philosophical Dialogues and Fragments (tr. Râs Bihârî Mukharjî):