My new favorite quote is from Martin Luther. He was complaining in the New Preface to Rauscher's "Geistliche lieder auffs new gebessert" about folks who would change his songs and then reproduce them without his permission, and he said the following:
... I am afraid it will be the same with this little book as it has been with all good books: it will be overwhelmed and devastated by the clumsiness of emptyheads, the good will be lost from it and only the useless retained, as we see in St. Luke, chapter one, that at the beginning everyone wanted to write a gospel, until the true gospel was nearly lost under so many gospels. The same has happened to Sts. Jerome and Augustine, and to many other books. In sum, there will be mouse dung in the pepper.
Martin had a way with words!
Posted by swanson at september 13, 2004 12:50 EM