The best thing is to learn...

“The best thing for disturbances of the spirit,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the poor mind can never distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”

-T.H. White, "Sword in the Stone"

Autumn...

The Summer was over at last, and nobody could deny that Autumn was definitely there. It was that rather sad time of year when for the first time for many months the fine old sun still blazes away in a cloudless sky, but does not warm you, and the hoar-frosts and the mists and winds begin to stir their faint limbs at morning and evening, with the gossamer, as the sap of winter vigor remembers itself in the cold corpses which brave summer slew. The leaves were still in the trees, and still green, but it was the leaden green of old leaves which have seen much since the gay colors and happiness of spring – that seems so lately and, like all happy things, so quickly to have passed.

T.H. White, "Sword and the Stone"

The Seeds of Destiny

Photo: Ben Romney, Europe

"...But Farmer Hoggett knew that little ideas that tickled and nagged and refused to go away... should never be ignored... for in them lie the seeds of destiny."

Babe, the movie