Better half of the landscape

"To my mind birds are half the scenery everywhere, and more than half on an Indian plain. The view addresses the eye, and the birds address the ear, and the two should work together. The man whose ear is untaught to enjoy the harmonious discord of the birds, walks alone when he might have company, and loses half the joys of travel and change of scene."
- EHA in The Tribes On My Frontier

Blissful being a bird

"It is always busy, hopping from bush to bush, from morning to night seeking the means of its livelihood, with just enough motion to banish thought! It would be difficult to conceive and healthier of happier life, where the power of thought is small."
- EHA in The Tribes On My Frontier

Credibility of brevity

"Half the art of telling a story, as of preaching a sermon, lies in knowing when to stop."
- EHA in The Tribes On My Frontier

Need for a diversion

"Every hobby is good, a sign of good and an influence for good. Any hobby will draw out the mind; but the one I plead for touches the soul too, keeps the milk of human kindness from souring, puts a gentle poetry into the prosiest life."
- EHA in The Tribes On My Frontier

Prescription for tedium: shift gears!

"The creative output and openness to others' novelty…isn't predicted by the person's age as much as by how long the person has worked in one discipline. Scholars who switch disciplines seem to get their openness rejuvenated. It's not chronological age but "disciplinary" age."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

The window diminishes

"As we age, most of us…become less likely to be open to someone else's novelty."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Malleable minds

"Youngsters are the most exploratory, both most likely to make a discovery and most open to changing their behaviour when observing someone else who has."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Familiar tunes

"If you are more than thirty-five years old when some new popular music is introduced, there's a greater than 95 percent chance that you will never choose to listen to that stuff. The window has closed."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Standpoint reversal

"Once, we were kids who believed enough in out immortality that we'd hitch rides with strangers. Now, instead, we flaunt the same irrationality by cheating on our low-fat diets. Once, we had not yet learned that life brings tragedies beyond control. Now, we wonder how we can spare our own children from that knowledge."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Intellect: a function of society

"We are shaped by the sort of society in which we live, and we would not be the same person if we had grown up elsewhere."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Re(a)lationship

"A relationship is the price you pay for the anticipation of it."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

The pleasure of 'maybe'

"The pleasure is in the anticipation of a reward…the reward is an afterthought."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Postponement of gratification

"Here's all of us forgoing immediate pleasure to get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job in order to get into the nursing home of our choice."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Body over behaviour

"Relationships can be contentious enough without your glands suckering you into inventing problems that don't exist."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Brain over body

"Sometimes, all you need to do is think a thought and you change the functioning of virtually every cell in your body."
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv

Instant science education

"Now, people tend to crave – and consequently overvalue – virtually anything new. The result is a pretty widespread impression among the lay public, who (for no fault of their own) learn their science in ten-second sound bites…"
- Robert M. Sapolsky in Monkeyluv