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It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.
--
Chapter 10 “Conversations in Mishnory” (p. 143)

 

Ursula K. Le Guin

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My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.

 

Bertrand Russell

 

It was a distance about twice as long as this room; then there was a wall, and just beyond it the crematory. When the wind blew in at the south I got smoke in my cell. It was a fat smoke, big flakes of smoke - human smoke.

 

Franz Halder

 

Experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. If you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. And if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. Hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue.

 

Leonardo da Vinci

 

Every one of these hundreds of millions of human beings is in some form seeking happiness...Not one is altogether noble nor altogether trustworthy nor altogether consistent; and not one is altogether vile...Not a single one but has at some time wept.

 

H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

 

Nose, nose, jolly red nose,
And who gave thee that jolly red nose?
Nutmegs and ginger, cinammon and cloves;
And they gave me this jolly red nose.

 

Francis Beaumont