In most cities the majority is composed of the ignorant, the idle, and the profligate. In most cities, after a time, there are enough of bad citizens to subvert good laws.
"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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Sunday, November 09, 2025
The Majority
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), "Pericles and Aspasia," CXCV, in his Complete Works, Vol. X (London: Chapman and Hall Ltd, 1929), p. 197: