Actually, of course, it matters very little to the prophets of the modern age whether we others are happy or not. For we have embarked on a hundred-year plan, and we are being invited to make the sacrifice of all we found pleasant and all we held sacred in the hope that, possibly, our great-nephews will be thankful to us. But you must fool some of the people some of the time; and so we are to be persuaded that it is possible to be happy even under modern conditions.
"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 13, 2023
The Sacrifice of All We Found Pleasant and All We Held Sacred
Ronald Knox (1888-1957), Broadcast Minds (London: Sheed & Ward, 1932), p. 95: