And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven't time to read.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.

When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.

Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.

Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.