kernel quotes

All true histories contain instruction; though in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.

- Anne Bronte« 
  Agnes Grey, ch.1.

   You define your own horror journey, according to your taste. My definition of what makes a journey wholly or partially horrible is boredom. Add discomfort, fatigue, strain in large amounts to get the purest-quality horror, but the kernel is boredom. I offer that as a universal test of travel; boredom, called byanyother name, iswhy you yearn for the first available transport out.But what bores whom?† The threshold of boredom must be like the threshold of pain, different in all of us.

- Martha Ellis Gellhorn
  Travels with Myself and  Another.

The nuttis schell, thocht it be hard and teuch, Haldis the kirnell, sueit and delectabill; Sa lyis thair ane doctrine wyse aneuch And full of frute vnder ane fenyeit fabill.

- Robert Henryson
c.1470  Moral Fables, prologue, l.15^19.