It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in. – Arthur Christopher Benson

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness. – Fred Hoyle, Of Man and Galaxies

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[A] morning-land full of immeasurable hopes encircled him; he stripped his breast, threw himself all aglow into the dripping grass, washed (but not with any higher purpose than girls have) his firm face with liquid June-snow… – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography,