Schopenhauer on blogging

Incredible are the folly and perversity of a public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like flies; merely because these writings have been printed to-day and are still wet from the press. It would be better if they were thrown on one side and rejected the day they appeared, as they must be after the lapse of a few years. They will then afford material for laughter as illustrating the follies of a former time.

It is because people will only read what is the newest instead of what is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire.

From On Reading and Books.

I wish I could say I found this myself, but I didn’t. Nor did Luigi, who passed it on to me, possibly to make me feel better about our joint and several endeavours. His friend Kevin sent it to him, and there the trail goes cold (for me). A glutton for punishment would go to the mother lode.