The Seven Subjects of Sensational Journalism: crime, scandal, speculative science, insanity, superstitions such as numerology, monsters, and milliona… - Fritz Leiber

Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.

I can see now that if I’d stayed I’d have gone the way of Pulg and all such Great Men—fat, power-racked, lieutenant-plagued, smothered with false-hearted dancing girls, and finally falling into the arms of religion. At least I’m saved that last chronic ailment, which is worse than the dropsy.

Know it or not, man treads between abysses a tightrope that has neither beginning nor end.