Are you one of the scandal-mongers, the back-biters? There are few faults that are so often overlooked by the consciences of those who are guilty of them as this, perhaps the most odious. Check yourself the next time it occurs to you to say something disagreeable, and don't say it; ask yourself afterwards what possible good you could have done by saying it. Are you one of the quarrelers, working off your ill temper, which you probably can't help, by taking it out of your neighbours, which you probably can help?
"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, November 06, 2023
Are You One?
Ronald A. Knox (1888-1957), Occasional Sermons (New York: Sheed & Ward Inc., 1960), pp. 370-371: