Victor's Pursuit of Serenity Chapter 22

However, scholars are like mountain hikers. They are tired of the smooth road, but also frown at the thorny paths. We like the right width and slope. We like startled birds to pounced tigers. We like to have a new view every five minutes and a water supply every ten minutes. In this way, after we go down the mountain, when we talk about where we went today, we can have that enviable tone of both calmness and experience.

In "A New Account of Tales of the World", Wang Xiaobo said: "A celebrity does not necessarily have to be a genius. As long as he has nothing to do, drinks heavily, and is familiar with "Li Sao", he can be called a celebrity." Celebrities in later generations do not even need to read "Li Sao". It is enough to just read "A New Account of Tales of the World".

For more than a thousand years, Shishuo Xinyu has been a treasure book for celebrities and a secret book of elegance. Whether you are studying in the countryside or holding a seal in the government, you must always read this book, find a few words to say, often talk about it, find a few interesting things to do, and do it a few times a year. In this way, your copper-colored air can be eliminated and your vulgarity can be tempered. Even if you are not a celebrity, you can be an elegant person.

Don’t read the Twenty-Four Poems

There are several ways to know things. The color, taste or smell, weight, and shape of a stone are all properties. Going further, there can be physical descriptions, theological explanations, and aesthetic observations. Aesthetics is still a vague thing. When an antelope stands facing the grassland, does it feel some kind of pleasure that is unrelated to appetite? No one knows. But we know that we are moved by the depth of the starry sky and the swiftness of the river. We like regular arrangements and hate things without a sense of form. There is no answer to where this ability attached to the eyes and ears comes from and what meaning it has for humans. We only know that this is our nature. We even created art. Generation after generation, we created countless paintings or poems, which are either exquisite or inferior. They are neither tools nor knowledge, but they induce people to exchange them for food. Gradually, we can't even separate appreciation from the appreciation of appreciation. We use reading instead of travel, and use poetry to represent nature, or at least confuse them.