I am not sure how many "sins" I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably sinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.

The greatest barrier to women's advance in the public world of action has been their acquiescence in the idea that they don't belong out there.

Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.

Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine.

Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.

Can one consider controversy without falling into it?

Great writers leave us not just their works, but a way of looking at things.