sometimes, a children's book...

"It's not... happy. Well, it is, it's the happiest I've ever felt. But it's complicated."

- Professor Lupin, Harry Potter and the Prisonor of Azkaban

From Thomas Aquinas' Introduction to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics

" Reason not only can direct the actions of the lower parts, but it also directs its own actions, because it belongs to the understanding part to reflect upon itself. Indeed, the understanding understands itself, and in the same way reason can reason about itself. Therefore, if the arts of building and making, through which man can do such actions easily and in an orderly way, were discovered because reason reasoned about the actions of the hands, for the same reason there must be some art which directs the actions of reason itself. Through this, man proceeds in the actions of reason in an orderly manner, easily, and without error. "

Charles Dickens says...

" A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. "

C.S. Lewis -- "On the Reading of Old Books"

" There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire. "

appreciation

" [Senor Rodrigo Gonzales] had a fat, blank face and the eyes of a killer. Watching him at tonight's reception, [James] Taggart had concluded that the man was impervious to any sort of feeling, he looked as though a knife could slash, unnoticed, through his pendulous layers of flesh- except that there was a lewd, almost sexual relish in the way he rubbed his feet against the rich pile of his Persian rugs, or patted the polish arm of his chair, or folded his lips about a cigar. " - Chapter IV, Atlas Shrugged

If I could accomplish just one thing as a writer, it would be to describe faces, feelings, personalities and dispositions with as much eloquence, exactness, and perfect charm as Ayn Rand.