One of my favorite quotes...

I've used a piece of this as my sig on some bulletin boards, but the full quote is way better. I find it incredibly hopeful and uplifting:

"We are a tough and resourceful lot, all things considered; our descendants
will have to be tougher and more resourceful still. The odds
are all against them. The stars are high, life is short, and the house always
takes a percentage. But Man himself is so unlikely that if he did not exist, his
possibility would not be worth discussing. Heinlein's money is on Man; and I
have a hunch that the next century will prove him right."

- Damon Knight , 1967
(from the introduction to Robert Heinlein's "The Past Through Tommorrow")

This quote was on Friday’s page of my Schott’s Almanac calendar:

“It seems to me to indicate great weakness of mind, when a person permits his peace to be at the mercy of every anonymous scribbler who, actuated by envy or hatred (the invariable cause of such attacks), writes a libel on him. If a person so attacked would but reflect that few, if any, who have ever acquired celebrity, or who have been favoured by fortune, have ever escaped similar assaults, he would be disposed to consider them as the certain proofs of a merit, the general acknowledgement of which has excited the ire of the
envious, thus displayed by the only means within their reach - anonymous abuse.”

- The Countess of Blessington, Paris, 1841

Further evidence that people don’t change… and that trolls have been around since at least 1841.

PS: I haven’t ever had the honor of such an attack by an “anonymous scribbler”, but I’ve seen a few thoroughly enjoyable websites dissolve under the assault of their acid. It makes me sad.