It's not a matter of whether or not someone's watching over you. It's just a question of their intentions.
- Randy K. Milholland

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
- Tom Stoppard

Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. - General George Patton Jr.

“Well, what good is a model if it can’t cope with what actually happens?”

Wilbur Ross, Institutional Investor, October 2007, pg 14

"And what of that? Is not a day divided into twenty-four hours, each hour into sixty minutes, and every minute sub-divided into sixty seconds? Now in 86,400 seconds very many things can be done."

--Alexandre Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo

“The cause was not in Dantes, but in providence, who, while limiting the power of man, has filled him with boundless desires.”

--Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“But the kings of modern times, restrained by the limits of mere probability, have neither courage nor desire.”

--alexandre dumas, Count of Monte Cristo

"To be unaccompanied by constant memories is to find a state of grace."
--quoted in Killing Rain by Barry Eisler, pg 121

"Sire, it is fatality!" murmured the minister, feeling that the pressure of circumstances, however light a thing to destiny, was too much for any human strength to endure.
--Alexandre Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo

“Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude, 1860

Risk Premium: A gauge of investors willingness to lose their clients’ money. A high premium occurs only after a lot of clients’ money has been lost and reflects money managers’ fear of losing their jobs. Devil’s Dictionary of Finance, Edward Chancellor Institutional Investor, Sept 07, page 212.

Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen."

--Lee Iacocca,
industrialist

"Well, Fernand, I must say," said Caderousse, beginning the conversation, with that brutality of the common people in which curiosity destroys all diplomacy, "you look uncommonly like a rejected lover;" and he burst into a hoarse laugh.
-----Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

--Gen. Eric Shinseki,
former Army Chief of Staff

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
--Robert Frost

Human identity seems a succession of inquiry and wakefulness. Who we are is discovered in layers of life and realization, questioning and consciousness.

Jill Carattini, [Slice 1462] Coming to Ourselves (July 16, 2007)

"How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy."
--Paul Sweeney

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams.
--Yiddish Proverbs

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break. He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.
--Thomas Fuller

Auspicious Hope! In thy sweet garden grow wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe. Cease, every joy, to glimmer in my mind, But leave --oh leave the light of Hope behind!
--Thomas Campbell

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, and hope without an object cannot live.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
--Joseph Addison

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
--Albert Camus

Knowledge is the hill which few may wish to climb; Duty is the path that all may tread.
--Lewis Morris

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
--Aristotle

Know then, whatever cheerful and serene Supports the mind, supports the body too:
Hence, the most vital movement mortals feel is hope, the balm and lifeblood of the soul. Our greatest good, and what we can least spare, is hope: the last of all our evils, fear.
--John Armstrong, Art of Preserving Health

For the hopes of men have been justly called waking dreams.
--Saint Basil

I slept and dreamt that life was Beauty;
I woke and found that life was Duty --
Was the dream then a shadowy lie?

--Ellen Sturgis Hooper

Optimism: having a strong expectation that, in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite setbacks and frustrations.

--Goleman, page 88

Hope: Believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals, whatever they may be. High levels of hope lead to being able to motivate oneself, feel resourceful enough to find ways to accomplish ones objective, reassure oneself when in a tight spot that things will get better, beng flexible enough to find different ways of achieving ones goal or to switch goals if one becomes impossible, and having the common sense to break down a formidable task into smaller, manageable pieces.

--C.R. Snyder, quoted page 87 of Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman

"We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
--unknown

my point is a simple one: just because systems evolve over time in a complicated, random, even contradictory fashion, there is no reason to think about solutions in that same way.

Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics Blog, 6-4-07

Music reveals a personal past of which, until then, each of us was unaware, moving us to lament misfortunes we never suffered and wrongs we did not commit.
--Jorge Luis Borges

You're part of the solution, OR
You're part of the problem, OR
You're part of the landscape.
--as quoted by Barry Eisler in Rain Fall

Rat Race Defined

A culture that requires more energy than we have to give.
--Pat Morley, MITM, 6-1-07

The heights by great men reached and kept
were not attained by sudden flight
But they, while their companions slept,
were toiling upward in the night.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the calling of the great man, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which is our wisdom to remember and weakness to forget.
--Sydney Smith

Sit, walk, or run, but don't wobble.
--Proverb

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have done.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly; who know great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worth cause. Who at the best, know the triumph of high achievements; and who, at the worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
--Theodore Roosevelt.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.
- Jay Leno

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
-- Thomas Edison

It is _______ how ________ life is sometimes.

Meekness: strength under control

"Everybody wants to be the king of a hill," he concluded. "But the number of aspiring kings always dwarfs the number of available hills, so in this country we build more hills."

David Segal, This American Life, Episode 279, December 10, 2004

Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.
- Heywood Broun

"Hope, like character, takes years to build and minutes to shatter." Ravi Zacharias

"Sorrow is founded on the value of something, and pessimism upon the value of nothing."
GK Chesterton

"God's love is an act flowing from a decision." Tom White

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
- Gene Fowler

"The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on."

--Walter Lippmann,
writer and journalist

Adventure is just bad planning.
- Roald Amundsen

"Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."-
- William James

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
--Isaac Asimov

“Any fool can buy a company. You should be congratulated when you sell."
--Henry Kravis, WSJ Article

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."

-- Will Durant

Pat Morley counsel

There are very few decisions that can’t wait 2 weeks

No decision is final until it has to be

Quick decisiveness is generally a sign of weakness and not strength

investment management is partially art, partially science, and at least a small part BS

Bill gross, Investment Outlook, December 2006

Albert Einstein - "I want to know [God's] thoughts; the rest are details."

Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win.
- Robert Heinlein

There's a peace only to be found on the other side of war. If that war should come I will fight it!
-King Arthur, First Knight

May God grant us the wisdom to discover right, the will to choose it, and the strength to make it endure.
-First Knight

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.
- Corrie ten Boom

"Remember, merciful Jesu, that I am the cause of your journey." - Mozart's Requiem

Fresh scent of earth after the first rains: petrichor

The belief that machines are out to get us: resistentialism

from Harold Bloom's book, Genius

."it is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary"

To confront the extraordinary, the genius, in a book, is to benefit almost without cost. Meeting the extraordinary in another person is likely to be deceptive and delusionary.

By "appreciation" I mean something more than adequate esteem. Need also enters into it, in the particular sense of turning to the genius of other in order to redress a lack in oneself, or finding in genius a stimulus to one's own powers, whatever these may emerge as being.

The ultimate anxiety of influence may be .... that one's inspiration may be larger than one's own powers of realization.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
-Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

The living language is like a cow-path: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay.

-E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)

"The more freedom you have to choose your path, the harder the journey is."

Ma Jian, Red Dust, pg. 186

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart, a desire of distinction, which inclines every man to hope, and then to believe, that nature has given himself something peculiar to himself.
Samuel Johnson

God will not show you any more of His will until you put in practice what He has already given you.
- Pastor David Uth

"Life is like driving a car at night. You can never see farther than
your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

-E.L. Doctorow

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

-John Updike

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
-H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Chance favors only the prepared mind.
-Louis Pasteur

(This is an interesting derivation of this famous quote. Most often heard as "Chance favors the prepared mind." Fascinating how the addition of one word can change the whole flavor of the quote. - AB)

Opportunities are seldom labeled as such.
John Shedd

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the
whole of our existence. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.
-John N. Bahcall, astrophysicist (1935-2005)

"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced."

-Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files

"And this, too, shall pass away"
-Abraham Lincoln

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitute to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitute"
-Emerson

The heart has its reasons that the reason doesn't understand
-Pascal

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

-Naguib Mahfouz, writer (1911- )

It is said that a prophet is not without honor except in his own country. I believe the opposite is also true - a country is not without honor except to those who come from it. So, if you are from Nevada, generally speaking Nevada does not hold honor for you, but if you are visiting Nevada, you think quite highly of her.

The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries surely stands in a lonely place.
-Gary Zukav, author (1942- )

'Tis with our judgements as our watches: none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. -Alexander Pope, poet (1688-1744)

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
-George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-M.K. Ghandi

"I pragmatically turn my whims into principles"
-Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
(Calvin's philosophy of life)

No one would speak much in company if he realized how often he misunderstands others.
-Goethe

It is useless to try to reason a man out of something he was never reasoned into.
-Jonathan Swift

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
-Lord Morley

"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
-Twelfth Night, Shakespeare

"Lord Angelo is precise; stands at guard with envy, scarce confesses that his blood flows or that his appetite is more to bread than stone"
-Measure for Measure, Shakespeare

One of the worst things about life... is how nasty the nice people can be.
-Anthony Powell

From the doctor and the lawyer, keep not the truth hidden.

Pay no attention to a critic. There has never been a statue raised in honor of a critic.
-Sibelius

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. -Thomas Pynchon, writer (1937- )

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfoldedfear.

-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author(1743-1826)

bildungsroman definition

'German term signifying "novel of formation" or "novel of education." The subject of this novel is the development of the protagonist's mind and character, in the passage from childhood through varied experiences and often through a spiritual crisis into maturity, which usually involves recognition of one's identity and role in the world"

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.

-Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

-Madame de Stael, writer (1766-1817)

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.

--Patrick Henry, 1775

Threshold Moment

When a process increases so drastically in rate and severity that a quantitative change becomes a qualitative one.

You're right not because other people say you're right, but because your facts are right.

--Warren Buffett

Information vs Knowledge

It is the greatest truth of our age - Information is not Knowledge
--Caleb Carr, Killing Time

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
-Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)

If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfullness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.

W.H. Auden

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, -- light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

-John Constable, painter (1776-1837)

esprit d'escalier (e-SPREE des-kal-i-YE) noun, also esprit de l'escalier
Thinking of a witty remark too late; hindsight wit or afterwit.

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.

-Carl Schurz, general and politician (1829-1906)

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
-Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (1847-1922)

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

-Marcus Aurelius, philosopher (121-180)

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number ofhours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo,Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer

"Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so"

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both. -Elizabeth Charles, writer (1828-1896)

 The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced what you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has let you down.

--Ravi Zacharias 

presentism (PREZ-uhn-tiz-uhm) noun

Evaluating past events and people by present-day values.

Genius is no respecter of persons. It picks up and transports the most unlikely of fellows, and leaves those once enthralled in its grasp gasping upon the shores of irrelevance.

My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast.
-Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. -Clarence Day, writer, (1874-1935)

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
-Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

I have learned to cooperate with the inevitable.