From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Continuous logicians do it to variable degrees of validity.
(Inspired by Saint Marko of the Street Corner.)

From the inimitable Tom Weller, author of the classic Science Made Stupid, comes this "minim" (the perfect answer to the maxim):

"You have with you the book you were reading ... which you are eager to continue, so that you can then hand it on to her, to communicate again with her through the channel dug by others' words, which, as they are uttered by an alien voice, by the voice of that silent nobody made of ink and typographical spacing, can become yours and hers, a language, a code between the two of you, a means to exchange signals and recognize each other." —Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler  (We've mentioned that this book is a masterpiece, right?)

What he saw, not only of reality but even in his imagination, was often blurred by fever, but within that vague dimness his cancer appeared to him as a flourishing bed of yellow hyacinths or possibly chrysanthemums bathed in a faint, purple light.
—Kenzaburo Oé, The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, translated by John Nathan, 1977.

Never play Poker with a pyromaniac.  He'll see your bet and raze it.

"Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable." —George Eliot

The sunsets in that African hell proved to be fabulous. They never missed. As tragic every time as a monumental murder of the sun! . . . For a whole hour the sky paraded in great delirious spurts of scarlet from end to end; after that the green of the trees exploded and rose up in quivering trails to meet the first stars. Then the whole horizon turned gray again and then red, but this time a tired red that didn’t last long. That was the end. All the colors fell back down on the forest in tatters, like streamers after the hundredth performance. It happened every day at exactly six o’clock.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.

"How to establish the exact moment in which a story begins?  Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book.  Or else the real story is the one that begins ten or a hundred pages further on, and everything that precedes it is only a prologue." —Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler  (We need not mention how wonderful this book is.)

Saint Ravioli
Patron of Pasta Making.

This puzzle grid reads, "It is in giving that we receive." The grid contains a word for a baby growing incisors. It also contains a word referring to paying a social call. Can you find them?

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"We are all like snowflakes."
—comedian Lewis Black

Can some types of knowledge be considered "luxuries"?  Here's Robertson Davies' take on "ornamental knowledge":


via Omegaword.

Which philosopher is funnier: Spinoza or Voltaire?

Clue:  This is according to a Torah scholar.

Answer:  Voltaire.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Jacob Neusner, The Life of Torah (1974), p. 100.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: