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.

Opinions that are well rooted should grow and change like a healthy tree.

Opinions that are well rooted should grow and change like a healthy tree.

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no read more

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us.

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.

There is such a thing as moderation, even in telling the truth.

There is such a thing as moderation, even in telling the truth.

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish good results while the strongest, by read more

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish good results while the strongest, by dispersing his effort over many chores, may fail to accomplish anything. Drops of water, by continually falling, hone their passage through the hardest of rocks but the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind.

Pro football gave me a good perspective. When I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, read more

Pro football gave me a good perspective. When I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy.

Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, read more

Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, W. B. Yeats and Others.