The Dark

For something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for. Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth. Every atom has its biography, every star its file, every chemical exchange its equivalent of the inspector with a clipboard. It is unaccounted for because it is doing the accounting for the rest of it, and you cannot see the back of your own head. Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

You cannot make Italians really progressive; they are too intelligent. Men who see the short cut to good living will never go by the new elaborate roads.

G.K. Chesterton, in the The Paradise of Thieves (A Father Brown mystery)

Wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.

 

G.K. Chesterton, in the The Blue Cross  (A Father Brown mystery) as attributed to "Poe."

Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

Ambrose Bierce

 

I wanted all things to make sense,
So we'd be happy instead of tense.

 From Nice, Nice, Very Nice, Ambrosia

 

Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious of the power to destroy.

Washington Irving,  The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

È sempre bene
Il sospettare un poco in questo mondo.

 

Mozart, Cosi fan tutte