March 2012
24 posts
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Sape homo de vanae gloriae contemptu vanius gloriatur. A man can be most...
– St. Augustine, Confessions
February 2012
27 posts
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Vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt.
They will not die; they dare not live.
– Seneca, Epistulae Morales
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Let us not carry flame where light alone will suffice.
– Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
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We’ll Handle Google And Apple, Mr. President; You... →
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‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself:...
– Thomas Jefferson (in correspondence)
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The light of history is pitiless; it has this strange and divine quality that,...
– Les Miserables
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There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast...
– Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
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The Monuments that mightie Monarches reare, Colosso’s statues, and...
– Henry Peacham, Minerva Brittana
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If a man be wealthy, no matter how he gets it, of what parentage, how qualified,...
– Anatomy of Melancholy
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It Is Something Invisible
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Vocabulary: Smooth Oppilator Edition
purly: Anglicization of “purlieu,” meaning outskirts of forest or city (esp. hunting) deliquium: in chemistry, melting or dissolution; elsewhere, a faint or swoon adust: dried, burned, or darkened by heat, or gloomy in look or manner myrachial: no definition. Apparently a synonym for hypochondriacal dummerer: a person who feigns dumbness (i.e. lack of voice) oppilate: to block or stop...
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Forty-three translations of Hadrian's "Animula,...
While English translations of Latin necessarily miss the poetic intention of the original somewhat, the effort is still worth making, sometimes again and again for hundreds of years.
Hadrian’s paean to his departing soul, while its inherent quality is apparently suspect, has nevertheless furnished scores of translations in English alone. Here are a good number, more than can be found...
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Syracuse started flat, with used-car dealers and junkyards. Then came stucco...
– Richard Stark, The Outfit