Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves. "We watch television," Dave said.

Certain types of decisions can be safely ignored. Some issues will go away with the passage of time, others will be so slow developing that the decision-makers will depart before the results of their neglect becomes manifest. Which brings us to the environment.

So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith.

Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend.

Most of us sleepwalk through our lives. We take all its glories, its wine, food, love, and friendship, its sunsets and its stars, its poetry and fireplaces and laughter, for granted. We forget that experience is not, or should not be, a casual encounter, but rather an embrace. Consequently, for too many of us, when we come to the end, we wonder where the years have gone. And we suspect we have not lived.

People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to pull all this together ... and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get annoyed.

The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge.