Thought for the DayFor shorter quotations such as these, even if they can be obtained electronically, I usually take the effort to type them out; sometimes, I even write them down on note cards. I find that doing so helps me get a feel for the author's diction and syntax that I don't get from simply cutting and pasting the quotation.
The historians play right into my court. They are pleasant and delightful; and at the same time Man in general whom I seek to know appears in them more alive and more entire than in any other sort of writing, showing the true diversity of his inward qualities, both wholesale and retail, the variety of ways in which he is put together and the events which menace him.
From Michel de Montaigne,
On Books (trans. M. A. Screech).
Posted by kungfuzi at 12:42 am |
