Same Familiar Faces
What did depress him sometimes was the need for dealing, year after year, with the same familiar faces. The marvels of medicine were all very well — and certainly he had no desire to put back the clock — but there were men around this conference table with whom he had worked for more than half a century. He knew exactly what they would say and how they would vote on any given subject. He wished that, someday, one of them would do something totally unexpected — even something quite crazy.
And probably they felt exactly the same way about him.
Not in a duel yet
Source: Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke, 1973, Buccaneer Books, p24