“Geologic history shows us that life is only a short episode between two eternities of death, and that, even in this episode, conscious thought has lasted and will last only a moment. Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night.
        But it is this gleam which is everything.”

—Henri Poincaré, The Value of Science (New York: The Science Press, 1907), 142. (Thanks, Michael Deas!)