1. We need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlaying our hard hearts.

                    -- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Chapter 19

2. A fish does not know water.

3. God gave humans language so that we might conceal our thoughts from one another.

4. The person you are today is a result of everything you have given up in order to achieve what you used to think you wanted.

5. Thank God! I have achieved tenure: now I finally have time to see my psychiatrist. . .

                              -- attributed to me, though I don't remember saying it.

6. Murphy's Law of Romance: Brains + Beauty = Availability, which is a constant. (Furthermore, this constant is nearly always = 0)

7. Seen from this perspective, the anxiety-ridden question of what happens to us when we die becomes no different from the question of what becomes of a fist when we open our hand, or where our lap goes to when we stand up.

                               -- Alan Watts, The Nature of Zen

8. Teachers prefer students to whom they need give only one side of the square for them to construct the rest -- not three sides.

9. We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful.

                              -- Mother Teresa

10. Though he should conquer a thousand men on the battlefield a thousand times, yet he who would conquer himself is the noblest victor.

11. Writing is a grim business.

                            -- Paul Silvia

12. There is no ill so great that it can't be cured by 10 or 11 cups of coffee.

13. Man is unjust--and he invented justice.

                            -- Ferreira Gullar

14. Most of our troubles come from our inability to sit quietly alone in a room.

                            -- Blaise Pascal

15. A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

16. Hate oppression! -- Fear the oppressed!

                            -- V. S. Naipaul

17.     The day is short,

            the workers are lazy,

            the task is difficult,

            it is impossible to complete it,

            But we are forbidden not to try.

                            --Talmudic proverb

18. Surely I am not better than a dog: like me, a dog has love; unlike me a dog does not judge.