Saturday, July 10, 2010

News-items

None of us is without fault.  And we all live in glass houses.  But, for those of us who presume to set the World -- and our fellow mortals -- aright, Nemesis patiently waits.

                                                  News-items

In spite of the delicacy of my moral feelings, and my unrelaxed solicitude for the maintenance of the right principles of conduct, I find I can read without tears of the retired Colonels who forge cheques, and the ladies of unexceptionable position who are caught pilfering furs in shops.  Somehow the sudden lapses of respected people, odd indecorums, backbitings, bigamies, embezzlements, and attempted chastities -- the surprising leaps they make now and then out of propriety into the police-courts -- somehow news-items of this kind do not altogether -- how shall I put it? -- well, they don't absolutely blacken the sunshine for me.

Logan Pearsall Smith, More Trivia (1921).

                                     Albrecht Durer, "Nemesis" (1502)

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