Too constantly, when reviewing his own efforts for improvement, a man has reason to say (indignantly, as one injured by others; penitentially, as contributing to this injury himself), "Much of my studies has been thrown away; many books which were useless, or worse than useless, I have read; many books which ought to have been read, I have left unread; such is the sad necessity under the absence of all preconceived plan; and the proper road is first ascertained when the journey is drawing to its close."
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
31 October 2016
Indignantly, Penitentially
Thomas De Quincey, "Conversation," The Lost Art of Conversation, ed. Horatio Sheafe Krans (New York: Sturgis & Walton Co., 1910), pp. 30-31: