Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Death is easy.
Even a poor tour guide is entitled to some happiness.
Catholic extremism should be resisted as fiercely at home as we oppose the Taliban abroad.
Maybe life involves the pairing of unsuitable people, those who wait and those who keep others waiting, and the key to happiness is finding the one person with whom you share the same internal chronometer.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between asking to be permitted to keep a vegetative relative on costly machinery, and asking the taxpayers or society as a whole to pay for such machinery.