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Augustine, Confessions §aug_conf_01_020: But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy?
augustine confessions
But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons, reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great a burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth away and cometh not again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love; the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.
- same section → Augustine, Confessions §aug_conf_13_020: Who gathered the embittered together into one society?
- same section → Augustine, Confessions §aug_conf_10_033: It is not certain then that all wish to be happy, inasmuch as they who wish n...
- on the shelf of → The classics — the great books, kept whole — a member of the classics shelf in the keeping
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