The Two Great Bores

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1956), p. 144: Kirk did not, of course, make me read nothing but Homer. The Two Great Bores (Demosthenes and Cicero) could not be avoided. There were (oh glory!) Lucretius, Catullus, Tacitus, Herodotus. There was Virgil, for whom I still had no true taste. There were Greek and Latin compositions. (It is a strange thing that I have contrived to reach my late fifties without ever reading one word of Caesar.) There were Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus.