Speaking of takedowns, here's Anthony Daniels (a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple) on Khalil Gibran. Incipit:
Among my mother's books was a copy of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I remember still the cream color of the cover, adorned with a soft-focus drawing of a young man with a thin moustache staring, Svengali-like, into some kind of philosophical infinity. Although—or was it because?—The Prophet was so popular at the time, selling by the million worldwide, I resisted reading it. I suspected that its profundity, or rather its straining after profundity, was bogus, and I was right. It is precisely in its ersatz quality that its popularity resides.
22:39 | link | | |
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.—Lord Peter Wimsey
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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.—St John of Patmos
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