The whole of life, my friend, is amazingly easy to blame, since it has nothing outstanding or great and impressive, but everything small, weak, short-lived, and mixed up with great pains.
εὐκατηγόρητος πᾶς ὁ βίος θαυμαστῶς, ὦ μακάριε, καὶ οὐδὲν ἔχων περιττὸν οὐδὲ μέγα καὶ σεμνόν, ἀλλὰ πάντα σμικρὰ καὶ ἀσθενῆ καὶ ὀλιγοχρόνια καὶ ἀναμεμειγμένα λύπαις μεγάλαις.
"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, July 18, 2024
Insignificant
Antiphon the Sophist, fragment 51 (tr. Gerard J. Pendrick):