There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at. first my
statement and proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to
think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have
found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I
possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sen-
tences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written
deliberately.-- Charles Darwin, AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The apparent wealth of thoughts and ideas one is sensible of in the abstract
possibility must be just as uncomfortable and evoke the same sort of unrest as
the cows suffer from when they are not milked at the proper time. One had
better therefore milk oneself when outward circumstances do not come to one's
aid. . . . [He determines, therefore to write frequently in his notebook, so that]
by more frequent entries to let the thoughts come forth with the umbilical cord
of the first mood, without any reference to their possible use (which in any case
I should never have from them by thumbing the pages of my book), but as if I

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