John Bunyan

He was imprisoned in an English jail in Bedford in 1675. There he wrote the greatest book of his life "Pilgrim's Progress" - read by more people than any book except the Bible. He has been quoted as saying: "I was at home in prison, and my great joy led me to sit and write and write." And the darkness of his captivity became a wonderful dream to light the path of millions of weary pilgrims.

Sherlock Holmes

(To finish the posting that was interupted yesterday)
Even the Royal Family bemoaned the loss of Holmes when Conan Doyle killed him off. (As reported by Bill Coles, a journalist living in Edinburgh, Scotland.)

Sherlock Holmes

The Holmes stories have been translated into 234 languages and are as popular today as they were in1887. Conan Doyle, just 27, was a bored doctor working in the south of England when he dreamed up his highly eccentric hero based on his old mentor at Edinburgh University's medical school, Dr. Joseph Bell. It was Bell's parlor trick to diagnose a patient just by appraising him from a distance, and holmes was to share this quirk. The Holmes stories have been translated into 234 languages and are as popular today as they were in 1887. Conan Doyle, just 27, was a bored doctor working in the south of England when he dreamed up his highly eccentric hero based on his old mentor at Edinburgh University's medical school, Dr. Joseph Bell. It was Bell's parlor trick to diagnose a patient just by appraising him from a distance, and Holmes was to share this trick. Even the Royal Family bemoaned the loss of Holmes when Conan Doyle killed him off. (As reported by Bill Coles, a journalist living in Edinburgh Scotland.)

Illusion

The sky is filled with stars at night
Illusion? - well for better word,
We do not see them as they are,
How they are we'll never know.
We see them only as they were,
When their twinkles sped our way
From many light years far away.

(I think this is a repeat)

"Trouble never comes to someone unless it brings a nugget of gold in its hand." (anon)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"And the night will be filled with music,
And the cares that besiege the day,
Will fold their tents like the Arabs,
And will silently steal away."

T. S. Eliot

"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Responsibility

We are unpredictable because we are each unique. Our one-of-a-kind being has never existed before or will ever again - so our actions and reactions are incomparable and uniquely our own. I think each of us alone bears sole responsibility for what we ultimately say and do - a modest prerequisite to the miracle of our precious existence.

Thomas Huxley

"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger."

Pierre Charles L'Enfant

This remarkable French art student at age 22 joined a group of French volunteers to the American War of Independnece. He saw action in Savannah and Charleston and ended the war with the rank of major. He was commisioned by George Washington to plan the nation's new capital - Washington DC. He chose the meeting place for Congress on the highest spot (Capital Hill) and the President's House on a ridge overlooking the Patomac River with a long promenade (the Mall) on a flat terrace between the two, overlaid by broad diagonal avenues. (Re: "Grand Avenues" by Scott W. Berg)

"Fear is that little dark room where negatives are developed." (Michael Pritchard)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The Jews afford an astonishing spectacle. The laws of Solon, Numa, and Lycurgus are dead; those of Moses, much more ancient, continue to live. Athens, Sparta, and Rome have perished and left no offspring on earth. But Zion, destroyed, has not lost her children.; they are preserved, they multiply, they spread throughout the world."

Marcel Proust

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

Michel de Montaigne

Gustave Flaubert, renown French novelist who sought perfection in the descriptive details of his masterpieces, kept a copy of Montaigne's Essays on his bedside table. After translation into English in 1603, Montaigne's Essays were poured over and esteemed by Bacon, Shakspeare, Lord Byron, Thackery, Emerson, Huxley, T. S. Eliot, and many other well known writers. Even today, Montaigne's Essays continue to be studied by scholars everywhere in the world.

The Blizzard of 2007!

Snowbound! - well over 12 inches of snow, high winds, and drifts measurable in feet not inches. All this followed by zero temperatures.

Chess

"Bishops move diagonally.That's why they often turn up where kings don't expect them to be." (Terry Platchett)

Les Miserables

Adaptations and abridgments of this, Victor Hugo's magnum opus, have been legion. The musical may never close. But according to Matthew Gurtwitsch, the novel - all 1400-plus pages of it - "is" Les Miserables and he says "you must wrestle it as Jacob wrestled the angel, hanging on for the sake of your very soul. On an epic journey like this one, a reader's attention is sure to wander from time to time. But every shortcut is a loss."

Plato

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."

Computers

"If you imagine the difference between an abacus and the world's fastest supercomputer, you would still not have the barest inkling of how much more powerful a quantum computer could be compared with the computers we have today." (Julian Brown) But we don't know how to build one -----------yet.

Elvis Presley

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."

Bernard Lewis

Another blog about this eminent authority on the Moslem world. Edward Gibbon once called the historian's "I" the most disgusting of pronouns. There is very little of that pronoun in Mr. Lewis's work. He took to the East to understand his own world telling us that that western civilization "did not spring like Aphrodite from the sea foam." He wanted to get to the mainsprings of Western civilization.

Albert Camus

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend."

Max Planck

In his book: "Where is Science Going" this physicist describes the endless challenge of science: "But if physical science is never to come to an exhaustive knowledge of its object, then does this not seem like reducing all science to a meaningless activity? Not at all. It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him."

Helen Keller

"When we do the best we can we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another."

St. Thomas Aquinas

He did not succeed in his brief 49 years to reconcile Aristotle and Christianity but as the historian Will Durant wrote : "in the effort he won an epochal victory for reason. He had led reason as a captive into the citadel of faith."

Shakespeare (Henry V)

Another favorite - the King's Saint Crispin's Day speech. This was also the favorite of President John F. Kennedy. The last four lines:
"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Shakespeare (Hamlet)

My favorite - I'm quoting from memory (I hope correctly):
"To be or not to be. That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."

Albert Camus

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invinciple summer."