Truth can seem harsh if unadorned, but with something pleasurable to recommend, it can penetrate more easily the minds of mortals. Pleasure is what catches a reader's attention and holds it when caught. Pleasure wins over all alike, unless someone is too stupid to be sensitive to the pleasures of the written word. What better [...]
Pope Julius II: "If you don't hurry up and open the gates, I'll unleash my thunderbolt of excommunication with which I used to terrify great kings on earth and their kingdoms too. You see, I've already got a bull prepared for the occasion."/ St. Peter: "Just tell me, please, what you mean by all this [...]
"I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a [...]
Plato somewhere says, that when grecians war with grecians, (notwithstanding they were separate and independent dynasties) it is not a war, but an insurrection. He would not consider them as a separate people, because they were united in name and by vicinity. And yet the christians will call it a war, and a just and [...]