You will find, at times, that an appropriate recital of the facts has compelled me to mix the impure with the pure. Do not skip over these parts and do not shy away from them, but persevere in your reading.
As on entering a garden you extend your ivory hands toward the flowers, leaving aside the thorns, so in this case relegate to one side offensive matters and gather what is praiseworthy.
-Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women (“Dedication”),
edited and translated by Virginia Brown, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press (Il Tatti Renaissance Library), 2001.
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