To relive the relationship between owner and slave we can consider how we treat our cars and dogs - a dog exercising a somewhat similar leverage on our mercies and an automobile being comparable in value to a slave in those days

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and smile.

To live is to see, and traveling sometimes speeds up the process.

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.

Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.