Orts #932

But our machines have now been running seventy or eighty years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving way; and however we may tinker them up for a while, all will at length surcease motion.
     -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814


When a thing is beautiful and good, it should be seen so clearly, and held so snugly, that no one will ever forget how it looks and how it feels.
     -- Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die (1993) chapter 9


. . . the challenge that makes each of us physicians continue ever trying to improve our skills; the challenge that results in the dogged pursuit of a diagnosis and a cure; the challenge that has resulted in the astounding progress of late-twentieth-century medicine-- that foremost of challenges is not primarily the welfare of the individual human being but, rather, the solution of The Riddle of his disease. . . . our most rewarding moments of healing derive not from the works of our hearts but from those of our intellects-- it is there that the passion is most intense. I have come to realize [this] truth, and even the necessity that it should be so. As doctors, we must confront that about ourselves every time we undertake to care for another human being; as patients, we must understand that a physician's driving quest to solve The Riddle will sometimes be at odds with our best interests at the end of life.
    -- ibid., chapter 12
 

"WOW!"

the full piece: Mozart, Masonic Funeral Music, K.477
https://youtu.be/FQiqY0ieegU