Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? Those who seek the folly of unrelieved 'happiness'-who fear moods, who shun solitude, who do not know the diginity of occasional depression-can find bliss easily enough: in tranquilizing pills, or in senility. The purpose of life is not to be happy.

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.

Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.