Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by MICHAEL UHRIN* "My God! What is our life! An everlasting disharmony between dream and reality."—Nicholai Gogol "Understanding is the reward offaith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."—Saint Augustine "The philosopher exists like the saint, only as an ideal."—William Dilthey "Pretense is always a prologue."—Michael Uhrin "The pain passes but the beauty remains."—Auguste Renoir "But how can fame and profit concern a man of genius?"—Li Ch'i "The parvenu, like the snob, is secretly ashamed of himself."—Thomas Craven "I came to realize that every man is all of man."—Jean-Paul Sartre "Choose well. Your choice is brief and yet endless. Work and despair not."— Goethe "Ignorance, like faidi and love, often blinds men."—Michael Uhrin "Every jackass going the road thinks he has ideas."—James Joyce "What is chaos but matter disturbed by immaterial forces."—Herbert Read ?Montefiore Hospital, 3459 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213. 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. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 31, 1 ¦ Autumn 1987 \ 153 "You are no more to concern yourselfhow the world talks ofyou, but how you are to talk to yourself."—Michel de Montaigne "Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty."—Carson McCullers "Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of help. . . ."—Henry Miller "Conquer yourself instead of the world."—René Descartes "The laboratory is to some people what the lottery office is to others— organized hope."—Honore de Balzac "Wisdom is long, violence is short."—Carl Van Doren "Friendship has one quality that renders it indissoluble and doubles its delight, a quality that love does not possess: certainty."—Honore de Balzac "Our money can never be as valuable as our memories or our friendships."— Clifton Ogburn "Fond of the game, but no fool—a real man."—Louis-Ferdinand Celine "Great achievements require relatively few ideas and even less men."— Michael Uhrin "... as the saying goes, no woman however beautiful, can give more than she possesses."—Théophile Gautier and collected by I. K. WILSONi "For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think.—Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly "When all else fails, read the instructions."—Anonymous "In an examination those who do not wish to know, ask questions of those who cannot tell."—Sir Walter Raleigh "There is nothing permanent except change."—Heraclitus t9 Foster Road, Lexington, Massachusetts 02173. 154 I It Has Been Said "An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them."—W. Heisenberg "When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity."—George Bernard Shaw "All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain."—Epictetus "Nature gave man two ends, one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since dien man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most."— George R. Kirkpatrick "Laboratorium est oratorium.—The place where we do our scientific work is a place of prayer."—Joseph Needham "I used your soap two years ago. Since then I have used no other."—Punch "One of die greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."— Walter Bagehot "Se no è vero ma è ben trovato.—It may not be true but it is well contrived."— Giordano Bruno (attributed) "If we had keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing die grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."—George Eliot "An intellectual is someone...