Musings, mostly about books although a clock enters into it also

"When I am dead
I hope it will be said:
His sins were scarlet,
But his books were read."
--Hilaire Belloc

The dorm clocks are hardy creatures. It is possible to drop one off the balcony and not kill it. Not that I recommend trying this.

"You can find all the new ideas in the old books; only there you will find them balanced, kept in their place, and sometimes contradicted and overcome by other and better ideas. The great writers did not neglect a fad because they had not thought of it, but because they had thought of it and of all the answers to it as well." G. K. Chesterton

Everyone's life is essentially either a tragedy or a comedy. In the end, you will either die or get married.

"The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not yet read them." Samuel Butler

Timothy Zahn's The Green and the Gray, with that whole Norse and nymph thing, is like Dante's Divine Comedy and Sayers's Lord Peter series. Zahn takes something educated and puts it in popular terms. What I object to in a lot of modern writing is "not that it's modern, but that it isn't anything else." If you are going to contribute literature, please be aware of what previous people have said.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." Jorge Luis Borges.

Speaking of Paradise, this afternoon I was rejoicing for I had found Dante's Hell when I thought I had lost it at Jonathan's birthday party. :-)