There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot in life which he has chosen, or which chance has thrown in his way, but praises those who follow a different course?
[Lat., Qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem,
Seu ratio dederit, seu fors objecerit, illa
Contentus vivat? laudet diversa sequentes.]
How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.
Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world.
An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.