NOTES, QUOTES AND THOUGHTS

• "A ship is safe in a harbor, but that's not what ships are for."

• "Nature tells her secrets not to those who hurry by but to those who walk with happy heart and seeing eye."

• "Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free."
  --Henry David Thoreau

• "Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible."
  --Mark Jenkins, To Timbuktu (Morrow)

• "We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens ... The diversity of the phonomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order, that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment."
  --Johnannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum

• "July 24 [1906] ... Pushing through brush and swamp for nearly three miles, we turned south up a mountainside free from timber and zigzagged upward without much difficulty. We soon look below on a fine lake [Wonder Lake], two or three miles long, which lies in a low divide between Moose Creek and the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna River. The outlet of this lake discharges into Moose Creek. Before reaching the top of the mountain we lunched and refreshed ourselves with the luscious blueberries that were everywhere abundant. Soon after starting again we caught glimpses of snowy peaks toward the south, and when we reached the top, Denali and the Alaska Range suddenly burst into view ahead, apparently very near.

  "I can never forget my sensations at the sight. No description could convey any suggestion of it. I have seen the mountain panoramas of the Alaska coast and the Yukon Territory. In the opinion of many able judges the St Elias range is one of the most glorious masses of mountain scenery in the world. I had viewed St. Elias and the adjacent mountains the previous year, but compared with the view now before my eyes they seemed almost insignificant."
  -- _The Wilderness of Denali_

• "When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have."
  --Edgar Watson Howe

• "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Don't ever piss one off."
  --Spider Robinson, _The Callahan Touch_

• "'Ford!' he said, 'there's an infinate number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.'"
  --Arthur Dent, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

• "Get out the map, get out the map, and lay your finger anywhere down. We'll leave the figuring to those who we pass on our way out of town. Don't drink the water there seems to be something ailling everyone. I'm gonna clear my head. I'm gonna drink that sun. I'm gonna love you good and strong while our love is good and young."
  --"Get Out the Map" by the Indigo Girls

• "Ever since I set foot, aged four, into the echoing stillness of Stoke Newington Church Street public library, I have been afflicted by an erotic fixation for lady librarians."
  "A pair of nylon-stokinged calves on a stepladder must have informed my tender psyche that here was the gateway to pleasure, knowledge, and power. One glance and I was lost. No therapy on earth could lesson my lust for librarians--and so, dear readers, I married one."
  --Norman Lebrecht, London Telegraph, November 8, 1997.

• "Grade: F. If you had given me only 15 pages of bulls__t, I could have given you a C. But for 55 pages, I have to give you an F."
  --Anonymous Yale philosophy professor

• "For that kind of money, I'm gonna have to have some proof that the gun is loaded."
  --the bank teller in bed three

• Number of pizzas Moscow's Pizza Hut delivered to the Russian parliament building during the Soviet coup: 260
  --Harpers Index

• "I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."
  --Tom Lehrer

• "Winter is nature's way of saying, 'Up yours.'"
  --Robert Byrne

• "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy next to me."
  --Woody Allen

• "A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you."
  --Adlai Stevenson

• "Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it."
  --P.J. O'Rourke

• Thoughts about mothers who cannot remember their kids' names (dedicated to my mother)

• Some thoughts on the Personal Ads.

• Some really deep horoscopes for us Cancerians.

• Some thoughts by Molly Ivins about the Separation of Church and State.

• My favorite ad ever.

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  08/22/00