“Most obstacles melt away when we make up our minds to walk boldly through them.”

“Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.”

“We will not conquer our obstacles by running away from them. Speed does not matter, just that we do not stop.”

“If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.”

“The rest-the vast majority, tens of thousands of days-are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. We glide through them then instantly forget them. We tend not to think about this arithmetic when we look back on our lives. We remember the handful of Big Days and throw away the rest.We organize our long, shapeless lives into tidy little stories...But our lives are mostly made up of junk, of ordinary, forgettable days, and 'The End' is never the end.”

“The language of distinction ceases to be available; is no longer available. We must search CD Rom for meanings which once were clear, but now are obscure. The words are too big for the narrow column of the contemporary newspaper. We are all one-syllable people now, two at most. So we mumble and stumble into our futures. But it is still our task and our reward to scavenge through the universe , picking up the detritus of lost concepts, dusting them down, making them shine. Latin was the best polishing cloth of all, but we threw it away.”