"And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed [[angel], represents a new hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears."

"God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth In our fingers, give us power, give us light To hold all love within our breast's small space."

"Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth. We hope to breed a race of men whose power Dwells in hearts as open as all Space Itself, who ask for nothing but the light That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars Above will be below when man has Love."

"Now we have lit a candle to the power Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light Itself..."

"Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the light That God gives us to net the distant stars In eyes that once were blinded with black earth. Man had no time for aught but toll, no space For aught but war. Yet God, in His great love, Has cleared our eyes and given a hint of Power."

"The way is open, comrades, free as Space Alone is free. The only gold is love, A coin that we have minted from the light Of others who have cared for us on Earth And who have deposited in us the power That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars."

"One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love That fights to keep us rooted in the earth, But also urges us to dare the stars, This irresistible, this ancient power Wedged in the soul, unshakable, is the light That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space."

"Though Melville omitted it, Captain Ahab said, "In one sense, Aleister Crowley is lower than whale shit. In another, he's as high as God's hat. The true shaman knows that God's hat is made out of dried whale shit.""

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

"The real heroes, and heroines, are those who deal heroically with the everyday cares of life, though God knows they’ve been multiplied enormously. It’s not the guy who kills a dragon once in his lifetime and then retires that’s a hero. It's the guy who kills cockroaches and rats every day, day after day, and doesn't rest on his laurels until he’s an old man, if then."

"Liquor’s good for one thing. It makes you forget what you’re afraid not to forget."

"Drowned idols swirl like seeds in chaos' wine. Look, Job! Caught Beauty, held to light, now apes A good, now evil, thing — the shifting sign And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes."

"Let those who think the soul is shallow rail, They must be warned before they dare to leap They'll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail."

"We too. No wisdom to utter. You've beauty, flux, and terror To tell. So've I. And they're Very hard to mutter Through so much chatter and stutter."

"Oh, I'd reach beyond the comma of you To the invisible phrase, the dangling Omega! No use. No act Of mine or mind denies the ante-cerebellum fact Of furry you, poised fleetingly, bright flex, Black reflex, too leaping for me to ink and fix As period to end what has no period, no, no End..."

"Prometheus, I have no Titan's might, Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart, For daytime's vulture talons tear apart The tender alcoves built by love at night."

"Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage."

"Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn Who hopes to wake the Future to arise In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes Of selfishness and lust have stained our days..."

"Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive From the act of beauty, beauty of the act."

"“Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?”… De Salcedo snorted. “I’ll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I'm interested in facts, not fancies.”"

"The utopian urge that prompted us in recent decades to write the world's thickest instruction manual, naming it the law of the land, has led us to invent a device that, like detailed rules, also avoids the untidiness of human judgment. It goes by an ancient name, process, but its purpose is new. It once existed to help humans make responsible decisions. Process now has become an end in itself."

"Consider Every Battle a Life and Death Struggle. This principle focuses on commitment and determination. When your life is at stake, you make an absolute commitment of all your power to your survival. For a shaman, the proper way to approach every task it with absolute commitment. The shaman realizes that a predator is not automatically successful because it is equipped with sharper teeth or stronger muscles. A predator can be seriously injured or even killed during the hunt. The lion kicked in the jaw by a zebra might be unable to hunt and die of starvation. So in every hunt, the hunter must be prepared to die. But this threat gives the hunter the advantage because it ensures that they will operate at peak performance level, completely at attention, keenly observant of everything in their environment, and fully in charge at the moment of action."

"..even MSJ readers will tire of watching Bill Gates adjust his glasses. (1995/10)"

"Does that remind you of anything? No? Give up?"

"...everything I've said so far is fine and dandy..."

"You can't expect me to do everything."

"That's left as an exercise for the reader."

"...blathering store clerks who can't stop saying "Have a nice day"..."

"We've use a number of different adjectives to describe Span, but "cool" has never been one of them."

"...the harmony of the universe is preserved..."

"That's no fun."

"If you're totally confused, don't worry, it means your brain is functioning normally."

"Everything is hunky-dory and your program works fine."

"Sometimes it really is easy to program MFC"

"..sometimes you have to be bad"

"..your two-year-old could've done that with one thumb in her mouth."

"..I'll be laughing when I'm old and and all my programmer friends have gone alexic from staring at too many tiny pixels"

"If this code works, it was written by Paul DiLascia. If not, I don't know who wrote it"

"..play Beethovens Fifth Symphony if the user clicks the control that contains 'Da-da-da-dum'"

"..flibbertiwidgets are free..."

"The question remains: how?"

"...your 90MHz Pentium won't have any trouble doing arithmetic (except for certain divisions)."

"...a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy..."

"...a little-known piece of C++ trivia you can use to impress your friends and loved ones."

"...this baroque language..."

"Isn't C++ wonderful?."

"...yucky assembly language mucky-muck."

"...I hate typing... (1993/6)"