A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.
Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient days those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement with a promising means of repairing shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling pursuit and the healthful recreation of the Quality of this land.
To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States.
I don't think I'll ever meet the perfect woman. I might have to get me one of them mail order women. You can do that: you send away to the Philippines, and they send you a wife. The only thing is, once you're on their mailing list, they keep sending you a relative a month whether you want it or not.