One more quote

From TRD, a Mongolian maxim :

"While your father is alive make as many friends as you can, while your horse is alive, see as many lands as you can."
 
 I get the second at least. But so many sayings are now attributed to Mongolia. One I actually heard there more than once over many years, and sounds right to me:

"If you are afraid, don't do it.

"If you do it, don't be afraid."

Commonplace Book

Another good quote: Samuel Johnson from Boswell's Life:

"Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. It is assuming a superiority, and it is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself. There may be parts of his former life he may not wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought to his own recollection."


This HAS to be the ultimate source of Patrick O'Brian's Diana Maturin's " I do not find Question and Answer a Liberal form of conversation..."

Sent by commenter "rob's uncle" on just that subject-- emphasis his.

A Few Quotes

From John Updike in 1992 describing writing book reviews:
"Knitting and purling at these reviews seems to be harder work for me than it used to be; we feel like field mice painstakingly weaving our little nests while the shadows of the hawks swirl all around us." HT Richard Francis.

"If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words."(Anonymous as far as I know).

In perhaps the same vein: "Blaming Darwin for evolution is like blaming Einstein for gravity." -- Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen.