It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by CRAIG BLACKSTONE* "I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so."—Rev. Sydney Smith "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten ."—B. F. Skinner "Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind."—Louis Pasteur "Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought."—Sir Arthur Helps "I strive to be brief, and I become obscure."—Horace "The journey is better than the end."—Cervantes "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."—R. L. Stevenson "He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty."—Samuel Johnson "We are always getting ready to live, but never living."—R. W. Emerson "To be great is to be misunderstood."—R. W. Emerson "Every man loves what he is good at."—Thomas Shadwell "They copied all they could follow But they could not copy our mind, And we left them sweating and swearing, A year and a half behind."—Rudyard Kipling *Address: 175 Freeman Street, Apt. 201, Brookline, Massachusetts 02146. Material appearing under this title is collected with the aim of making the serious a bit less serious, the ponderous a bit less heavy, and the reading hours a bit more fun. Toward this goal we invite a guest editor of this feature for each issue. Will readers volunteer to share their senses of humor by collecting or recollecting items that have brought smiles to their faces? We invite your participation. Originals are also welcomed. 308 I It Has Been Said "Live is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating ."—O. Henry "Good families are generally worse than any others."—Anthony Hope "I find the medicine worse than the malady."—John Fletcher "Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyse it by encumbering it with remedies."—Leo Tolstoy "All great truths begin as blasphemies."—G. B. Shaw "AU professions are conspiracies against the laity."—G. B. Shaw "Rules and models destroy genius and art."—William Hazlitt "What experience and history teach us is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted upon principles deduced from it."—G. W. F. Hegel "Laws are like spider webs: if some poor weak creature come up against them, it is caught; but a bigger one can break through and get away."—Solon "A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man." —William Hazlitt "Nature is usually wrong."—James McNeil Whistler "For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"—J. G. Whittier "The intellect of man is forced to choose—perfection of the life or of the work."—W. B. Yeats "There is always room at the top."—Daniel Webster "Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man."—Richard Whately "The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset."—Geoffrey Madan "Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions."—SirJames Mackintosh "Sciatica: he cured it, by boiling his buttock."—John Aubrey "Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few."—Bishop Berkeley Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 39, 2 ¦ Winter 1996 309 "Physicians are like kings—they brook no contradiction."—John Webster "I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life."—Rev. Sydney Smith "Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."—John Wesley "Publish and be damned."—Duke of Wellington "Fail to publish and be damned."—Craig Blackstone 310 It Has Been Said ...