Knowledge, method & the one essential thing:

A E Housman was a poet and classical scholar and he said this (which has to be one of my most favorite professorial pieces of advice) (and because he was a poet and a classical scholar--indeed, counted by some as one of the greatest scholars of all time--it is extra weighty and wise and worth taking to heart, I feel):

"Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all other is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head."

You can't disagree with that. And I for one--I am going to do my best to follow it. (Although trying to follow it on a day when you wake up with a pumpkin for a head and pudding for brains is tricksy. Nevertheless.)

Housman published two books of poetry in his lifetime. One of them was the 63-poem cycle A SHROPSHIRE LAD (1896) which has these beautiful lines:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide."

--A E Housman (1859-1936)