For how few pass beyond the age of a hundred years, or attain to it without regretting the attainment—even as Scripture bears witness in the book of Psalms [90.10]: The days of our life are threescore years and ten, and if it is long, fourscore; what is more of them is labor and sorrow!
quotus enim quisque aut centenariam transgreditur aetatem aut non ad eam sic pervenit, ut pervenisse paeniteat, secundum quod in libro Psalmorum Scriptura testatur: dies vitae nostrae septuaginta anni, si autem multum, octoginta; quidquid reliquum est, labor et dolor?
"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).
Pages
▼
Saturday, November 02, 2024
Life's Limit
Jerome, Letters 10.1.2 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54, p. 36; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow):