Sometimes elder statesmen can be kind. A concert program quoted Hector Berlioz's praise of the brilliant young composer Camille Saint-Saëns: "He knows everything, except inexperience." (Wikipedia gives it in French as "Il sait tout, mais il manqué d'inexpérience.") In the opposite direction, however, there's physicist Wolfgang Pauli's scathing criticism of a junior colleague, "So young, and already so unknown." Ouch!

^z - 2012-07-12