Armchair Wisdom, by J. Iner Souster

As his cigarette burnt holes in the Herculon, Addison sat there, reading, enthralled by the words formed within, bound in something familiar but foreign. The book had aged with the filth of time, the once white pages now a sallow yellow, its margins worn away by the blood and ink-stained thumbprints from countless hands before him.
It would have been wonderful to think he hadn't already read these words, but he knew better now. He was fully aware that everything is cyclical and that the universe is an eternal loop with no end and no new things created, just recycled.