Emerson,' I said, choosing my words with care, 'it is a sheer drop from the cleft down to the base of the cliff. If you are bent on breaking your arm or your leg or your neck or all three, find a place closer to home so we won't have to carry you such a distance.

Is is difficult to be angry with a gentleman who pays you compliments, even impertinent compliments. Especially impertinent compliments.

Everything has happened before - not once, but over and over again. We may not be able to solve our problems through what are pompously called "the lessons of history," but at least we should be able to recognize the issues and perhaps avoid some of the solutions that have failed in the past. And we can take heart in our own dilemma by realizing that other people in other times have survived worse.

If you take a man by surprise, and behave with sufficient arrogance, he will generally do what you ask. -Emerson

The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family." "Very boring, Emerson.

..he continues to cling to the forlorn hope that I will turn into one of those swooning females...and fling myself squeeling at him whenever anything happens. Like all men, he clings to his illusions.