The Intellectual Life by A.G. Sertillanges is good for one thing if it is good for nothing else: excellent quotes! I found this one on searching for truth to be a simple yet brilliant use of analogy:

See what happens when you want to furnish a house. Until now you never thought of furniture, so little indeed that going about the streets of Paris where every fourth shop is a collector’s, you did not even see the things; the shapes did not make you stop; you did not know the tendencies of fashion, the chances of the find, the specialty of this or that district, the prices, etc. On the contrary, now that your mind is awakened by desire, everything strikes you; everything holds you; Paris is like a huge store, and you know in a week what a lifetime would not have taught you.

Truth is commoner than articles of furniture. It cries out in the streets and does not turn its back on us when we turn our backs on it. Ideas emerge from facts; they also emerge from conversations, chance occurrences, theaters, visits, strolls, the most ordinary books. Everything holds treasures, because everything is in everything, and a few laws of life and of nature govern the rest. (pp. 72-73)

If I have learned one thing from this book it is always be a learner. Or as that one beer commercial says, “Stay thirsty my friends”.