Metaphysics is a cobweb that the mind weaves around things.
Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?
Life is cruel? Compared to what?
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
Home is where, when you have to go there, you probably shouldn’t.
I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
Life imitates art – but badly.
For this world that men have made, none of us is bad enough. For the world that made us, none is good enough.
Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.
We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.
A life without tragedy would not be worth living.
The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.
The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.
Once upon a time, I dreamed of becoming a great man. Later, a good man. Now, finally, I find it difficult enough and honor enough to be – a man.
In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that’s on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.
My computer tells me that in twenty-five years there will be no more computers.
The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee- pad conservative...
The gurus come from the sickliest nation on earth to tell us how to live. And we pay them for it.
One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante’s plastic Paradiso, or Yeats’s gold-plated Byzantium.
There comes a time in the life of us all when we must lay aside our books or put down our tools and leave our place of work and walk forth on the road to meet the enemy face-to-face. Once and for all and at last.