Here's Peter Brown's recent inaugural address (pdf) at the opening of the Oxford Center for Late Antiquity. A random bibliophilic quote:
Only recently, I experienced a feeling of strangeness as I sat at home, reading Morin's edition of newly discovered sermons of Augustine, printed in the 1930 centenary collection of Miscellanea Agostiniana. There was good reason for this sense of unease. This massive tome with its generous print and wide margins had its allotted place in the Theology section of the Lower Bodleian. To be precise, it was near to the window overlooking the inner courtyard, to the left as you entered from Classics. To think of removing it from that place was as inconceivable as to think of removing a feature from a well-known landscape - like stealing the Rock of Gibraltar or removing the head of Washington from Mount Rushmore. A few hours later, to place pages of this volume across a xerox machine, so as to make copies of Sermon Denis 24 for the use of a seminar, awoke in me an Oedipal thrill which (in the 1950s) would have kept the Freudian analysts of that distant age in business.
10:46 | link | | |
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.—Lord Peter Wimsey
Left column Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.—St John of Patmos
Right column Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.