Perhaps, if you were to become too perfect morally, you would become like that little stunted tree I see through my window, that no longer produces a single leaf.
Peut-être que, si l'on perfectionnait trop sa morale, on deviendrait comme ce petit arbre rabougri que je vois par la fenêtre de mon jardin et qui ne produit même plus une feuille.
"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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Thursday, December 07, 2017
Moral Perfection
Jules Renard, Journal (May 16, 1905; tr. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget):