Pensées of Mauritian aphorist Malcolm de Chazal:

• Birdsong is always in pitch. Birds sound wrong only when frightened.
• The underbrush makes the light chubby.
• A trotting dog: his hind legs knit and his forelegs crochet.
• Night softens the mind’s irritations and inflames the body’s.
• The mouth and eyes are each anagrams of the other.
• An animal’s feet are as intelligent as a man’s hands.
• Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
• A cat purrs himself to sleep, being the only creature who sings his own lullaby.
• Shadows round everything out. The lacework of light is based on a circular pattern.
• Good taste has no fixed rules, though fashion has. Taste amounts to being fashionable with a sense of style.
• The eyes of the overly fearful stammer.
• Servants eventually come to resemble their masters. “Professional” churchgoers end up looking like priests.
• Suffering doesn’t ennoble unless there is greatness to begin with.

And “Number is the alphabet of form, which is why children always want to touch whatever they count.”