Hot And Cold

From today's Quotes Of The Day (a great thing to subscribe to), a sentiment I agree with. After fifteen years here, I still cannot think in Fahrenheits. While I manage somehow to use other kinds of measures belonging to the ancient, illogical system used locally (in the USA), Celsius is one I cannot shed ever:

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born at Gdansk on this day in 1686. The Dutch physicist invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709 and the more reliable mercury thermometer in 1714, and developed the system of measuring heat that bears his name. Although I greatly prefer the more convenient Celsius scale, I'll honor the inventor with quotes on Hot and Cold.

Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.
- Elwyn Brooks White, 1899 - 1985

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
- Franklin P. Jones

Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death!
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

If the temperature in the bathtub is raised only one degree every ten minutes, how does the bather know when to start screaming?
- Marshall McLuhan, 1911 - 1980

To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
- Sydney Smith, 1771 - 1845

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
- William Butler Yeats, 1865 - 1939