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Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.

-Herman Melville

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Nearly All Literature, In One Sense, Is

Herman Melville

Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.

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    <p style="font-size: 1.2rem; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 10px;">"nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper."</p>
    <footer style="font-size: 1rem; font-weight: bold;">— Herman Melville</footer>
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Father Book Age

More From Herman Melville

Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness - amid all this, i was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of uiko's treachery.

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -letter to the fourth national congress of soviet writers

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. god keep me from ever completing anything. this whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. oh, time, strength, cash, and patience!

Before one goes through the gate one may not be aware there is a gate one may think there is a gate to go through and look a long time for it without finding it one may find it and it may not open if it opens one may be through it as one goes through it one sees that the gate one went through was the self that went through it no one went through a gate there was no gate to go through no one ever found a gate no one ever realized there was never a gate

I like "rock, paper, scissors two-thirds." you know. "rock breaks scissors." "these scissors are bent. they're destroyed. i can't cut stuff. so i lose." "scissors cuts paper." "these are strips. this is not even paper. it's gonna take me forever to put this back together." "paper covers rock." "rock is fine. no structural damage to rock. rock can break through paper at any point. just say the word. paper sucks." there should be "rock, dynamite with a cutable wick, scissors."

Christ and the life of christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. it may confess him, as in tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny him, but it cannot exclude him; and in the degree that it ignores his spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. in other words, all good literature is now christmas literature.

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