Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.To forget it!You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.But the Solar System! I protested.What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.This is Watson describing one of his earliest conversations with Sherlock Holmeshttp://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DoyScar.html

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

Plato

Don't fear change -- embrace it.

Anthony D'Angelo

Divorced men are more likely to meet their car payments than their child support obligations.

Susan Faludi

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.

Martin Luther

Make your mold. The best flux in the world will not make a usable shape unless you have a mold to pour it in.

Robert Collier

Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.

Giordano Bruno

How can you have charisma? Be more concerned about making others feel good about themselves than you are making them feel good about you.

Dan Reiland

I've worked very hard in this book to keep the lines of communication open. I don't want to turn someone away from this information for partisan political reasons.

Jared Diamond

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

Ellen Goodman

No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.

Bram Stoker