After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, read more

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

It is not good to have an oar in everyone's boat.

It is not good to have an oar in everyone's boat.

To be what no one ever was, To be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those Extremes read more

To be what no one ever was, To be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those Extremes that fence all effort in.

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that read more

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.

The greatest weakness of all is the great fear of appearing weak.

The greatest weakness of all is the great fear of appearing weak.

Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding on to.

Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding on to.

The intellect is weak; it has no power except over what is as weak as itself.

The intellect is weak; it has no power except over what is as weak as itself.

Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence. - A Letter to Myself.

Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence. - A Letter to Myself.

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite read more

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language. - Aphorisms from His Bedside Teachings and Writings.