Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Merely modern

Via Patrick Kurp. Carlyle on what a young man should read:
...you may be strenuously advised to keep reading. Any good book, any book that is wiser than yourself, will teach you something — a great many things indirectly or directly, if your mind be open to learn.
And...
The first use of good literature is that it prevents a man from being merely modern. To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one’s last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns. [more]

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