Saturday, October 16, 2010

Emerson


"In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,—some of them,—and are eager to give us a sign and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,—not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets, all alike."

3 comments:

  1. Which is why goodreads.com is so useful.

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  2. I read carton-loads of shit until I discovered the English canon.

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  3. Ditto. Well, sort of. I have had a natural aversion to modern literature (which is mostly shit) since childhood.

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