Gauss's Law

"Now, now, you might be sayin', 'Dr. Quon, what's so great about Gauss's Law?'. Well (gestures wildly at board as if words are futile) the left hand side [of the equation] is ugly. What makes it ugly? You've got vectors and a dot product and integrals. And the right side? Well, the right side is easy. That's like, that's like saying something that's ugly is equal to something that's easy..." (guys in the corner start snickering; then the whole class starts) "...why are you guys laughing?" --my physics teacher

Everyone says 'follow your dreams', but how many of the people who say that ever did? When I have kids, I'm going to instead tell them 'settle for something with decent benefits and retirement'.

We’re like snowflakes, yes, but tarnished snowflakes. Up close every individual has some redeeming quality that makes him or her uniquely beautiful, but from afar all you can see is the black of our collective soot.

Life is not a solid thing to be touched and held, but a gossamer webbing of light and music that is tossed about erratically in wind currents that have no mapping and no name. And when at each successive moment the tenuous weave holds fast, you catch your breath and marvel that by some unseen power this one fragile little life continues.

(or, alternatively to 'continues', 'goes on')