“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, each of us will have two ideas.” — George Bernard Shaw

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Talent is luck, what’s important in life is courage.” — Woody Allen

“Art produces ugly things that frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things that always become ugly with time.” — Jean Cocteau

When Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was stepping out of her carriage one day, an Irish dustman exclaimed, “Love and bless you, my lady, let me light my pipe in your eyes!”

Afterward, whenever others would praise her, she would reply, “After the dustman’s compliment, all others are insipid.”

“I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.'” — Winston Churchill

L.E. Dickson on why he’d spent a decade writing a 1,602-page history of number theory: “It fitted with my conviction that every person should aim to perform at some time in his life some serious useful work for which it is highly improbable that there will be any reward whatever other than his satisfaction therefrom.”

“Yes, that man has missed something who has never awakened in an anonymous bed beside a face he will never see again, and who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust for life.” — Flaubert

In writing obituaries, “act on the theory that any man has had at least one interesting thing happen to him.” — William S. Maulsby, Getting the News, 1925

Think of it like this: Geography is riding in a car along with Science and Art. Geography is, in fact, riding in the back seat. Science has been driving for seventy-five years, fighting with Art all the way. Science scorns Art; Art sneers at Science. Neither pays much attention to Geography, except for help with reading the map. Geography tries to take a nap, but cannot sleep. Geography tries to understand why Art and Science fight so, but gives up and looks out the window, which is really more interesting than the fight anyway. Art protests that Science drives too fast. Science snaps back that Art does not understand how to make progress. Geography sometimes sides with Art, often with Science, but neither cares much, nor do either of them care when Geography announces that they are now passing Cleveland. (Science grunts, eyes straight ahead; Art faces so as not to see Cleveland.) Finally, Geography can take no more and tells Science to pull in at the next rest stop.

— W.T. Grvaldy-Sczny, “A Diamond Anniversary,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979), 1-3.