It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by JEFFREY D. BERNHARD* "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."—Bertrand Russell "Progress may have been all right once, but it went on too long."—Ogden Nash "A wise man is never surprised."—Horace "About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong."—T. S. Eliot "Science is magic that works."—Kurt Vonnegut "Genius may be a triumph of nature, but it is an affront to reason, to discipline , to sheer hard work."—J. A. Elias "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion."—Francis Bacon "There are two things more important than writing—one is action and the other is silence."—Erik Erikson "There are as many grammars as there are grammarians. . . ."—Erasmus "Wisdom is only happening to guess right."—Euripides "The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions."—Lévi-Strauss "For us, there is only the trying."—T. S. Eliot "Of all the manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most."— attributed to Thucydides "When you do not have any money the problem is food; when you have money it is sex; when you have both it is health; and when everything is simply great then you are frightened of death."—J. P. Donleavy "The more we live by our intellect the less we understand the meaning of life."—Tolstoy ". . . the arts of life? The first of them is never to deny an accusation: embrace it and make a merit of it."—Bernard Shaw *Division of Dermatology, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester, Massachusetts 01605. 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. 78 It Has Been Said "Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the 'meaning,' but do not imagine that it can be taught."—Hermann Hesse "For man himself is a mystery, and all humanity rests upon reverence before the mystery that is man."—Thomas Mann "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible ."—Albert Einstein "I could explain the matter easily enough if I chose; but the result would be that the people who misunderstand the plays would misunderstand the explanation ten times more."—Bernard Shaw "I reserve the right to die or resign without notice."—Justice Harlan "Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love itjust the same."—E. B. White "No good deed goes unpunished."—Andrew Mellon "If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt."—Thomas Carlyle and collected by ADRIAN I. KATZ* "Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre. Implicit is a conviction that the writer is wiser than his readers."—W. H. Auden "Nobody remembers the second person to say E = mc2."—N. Samios "All problems are divided into two classes: Soluble questions, which are trivial, and important questions, which are insoluble."—George Santayana "AU the world's cemeteries are full with irreplaceable people."—Anonymous "Old men love to give good advice to console themselves for not being able to set bad examples."—La Rochefoucauld "Having a mind of one's own doesn't necessarily imply having any mind as such."—Peter de Vries "The role of culture is to enable us to talk nonsense with distinction."— Somerset Maugham "It is possible that everything in the world that we deem inadequate or in error has its profound reason on a different plane."—André Maurois "There never was a great scientist who did not make bold guesses, and...