What a lovely thing a rose is!... Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But the rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras.
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), British author. Sherlock Holmes, in "The Naval Treaty,"
I have arms-full of notebooks and journals. It is a trip to read through them to see what I was doing 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. I got a stack of notebooks out now and they are sitting there, patiently, as they have waited for years, to feel a pen glide over their paper. Maybe tomorrow.
