Citations

[E]verything “that is said from the angle of the true collector” is bound to appear as “whimsical” as the typically Jean Paulian vision of one of those writers ‘who write books not because they are poor, but because they are...

If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and...

The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a...

There is an obvious resemblance between an unreadable script and a secret code; similar methods can be employed to break both. But the differences must not be overlooked. The code is deliberately designed to baffle the...

All writing is orderly, and that leads directly to the contemporary crisis in writing. For there is something mechanical about the ordering, the rows, and machines do this better than people do. One can leave writing, this...

I even recalled the story (a true one, I’ve been told) of the book store employee who one day found in his shop, high on a top shelf, among old German books forgotten there for ages, a volume of Jean-Paul (an author he had...

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. At this point many of you will remember with pleasure the large library which Jean Paul’s poor little schoolmaster Wutz...

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for...

[...] the idea that nature has painted this code, for which we lack the key, purely for ornament’s sake on the shell of one of her creatures—no one can convince me of that. Ornament and meaning have always run side by side,...

Whatever one does, one always rebuilds a monument in his own way. But it is already something gained to have used only the original stones.