Perhaps it's a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet shoes and socks, for instance.

Smiting enemies has always been so admired that, unlike medicine or archaeology, it entitled its successful practitioners to become kings, emperors, and presidents.

Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.

Exercise, to qualify at all, must be lonely, painfu, humorless, and boring.

The thing to remember is that children are temporary. As soon as they develop a sense of humor and get to be good company, maybe even remember to take the trash out and close the refrigerator door, they pack up their electronic equipment and their clothes, and some of your clothes, and leave in a U-Haul, to return only at Thanksgiving.

True ownership of anything requires time.

One's own flowers and some of one's own vegetables make acceptable, free, self-congratulatory gifts when visiting friends, though giving zucchini - or leaving it on the doorstep, ringing the bell, and running - is a social faux pas.