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.

If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he read more

If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking -- one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.

The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we read more

The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.

A lot of my peer group think I'm an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle somewhere read more

A lot of my peer group think I'm an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle somewhere on my body. That's okay.

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.

We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in the social, our historic passions read more

We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in the social, our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

There is nothing more wonderful than freedom of speech.

There is nothing more wonderful than freedom of speech.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.