“Who’ll read that sort of thing?”

—  Persius

Satire I, line 2 (translated by W. S. Merwin).
The Satires

Original

Quis leget haec?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Who’ll read that sort of thing?" by Persius?
Persius photo
Persius 12
ancient latin poet 34–62

Related quotes

“I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[at2mut$at9$1@panix1.panix.com, 2002]
Compare "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." (attributed to w:Abraham Lincoln).
2000s

Don Marquis photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“Well, for people that like that sort of thing, I think it is just about the sort of thing they would like.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed to "an American President" in Ármin Vámbéry (1884), All the Year Round. It more likely originates in a spoof testimonial that Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) wrote in an advertisement in 1863:
Posthumous attributions

“I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)
Context: Well, I decided that as a teenager that I really didn't know enough to describe character well and I was wasting my time. I'd learned as much as I could about story telling techniques and it wasn't a matter of technique any more. It was a matter of substance. As a result I said I was going to wait until I was a lot older and had more experience. So it was that after I got out of college I'd been away from SF for about four years. I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.

Anaxagoras photo

“And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours”

Anaxagoras (-500–-428 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.

Related topics