Roman Multiculturalism

While the toddler was watching his morning alphabet-indoctrination program, I read through the small amount of Latin that remains of Florus' carmina.

Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucia. 

cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius: 

quippe malim unum Catonem quam trecentos Socratas.

 

Shun the morals brought across seas; they've a thousand trickeries. 

None in all the world lives straighter than a citizen of Rome. 

Why, I prize one Cato more than fifteen score like Socrates.                                             (trans. Duff & Duff)

To make use of my mornings with the toddler while the wife sleeps in with the newborn, I think I shall continue this program of reading through all of select authors.

The Quest for Community

From The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet:

A sense of the past is far more basic to the maintenance of freedom than hope for the future. (p.184)

A succinct justification of my profession.

Catching up (again)

Since the last post, the following have been read:

1776 by David McCullough
The Fall of the Berlin Wall by William F. Buckley Jr.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon
Only the Lover Sings by Josef Pieper

More Industry Than Wit

From Elizabethan Stage Conditions:

...are typical of the Ph.D. theses, regularly turned out, with perhaps more industry than wit, from the American universities. (p.21)

The producer becomes a fearful wild fowl when he takes the theatre as an independent art. The rise of this new and very belligerent art means that its rights are asserted with the noisiness of a Suffragete. (p.120)

E.B. White and the IRS' Rhetorical Secrecy

From One Man's Meat:

(In reference to a paragraph length sentence on tax exempt items) That sentence...was obviously written by a lawyer in one of his flights of rhetorical secrecy. There isn't any thought or idea that can't be expressed in a fairly simple declarative sentence, or in a series of fairly simple declarative sentences. The contents of Section G of Form 1040, I am perfectly sure, could be stated so that the average person could grasp it without suffering dizzy spells. I could state it plainly myself if I could get some lawyer to disentangle it for me first. I'll make my government a proposition: for a five-dollar bill (and costs) I will state it plainly. (p.107)

How Do You Tuck In A Superhero?

A quick note to say that I finished reading How Do You Tuck In A Superhero?

I had to read this after the number of times that I heard my wife laughing aloud as she read it. The author also has a blog.

Catching Up

I have not had time to post from the following recent reads:

The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom
Interviews with Robert Frost
Postmodern Pooh by Frederick Crews
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini