Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?

That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solitude is the enemy of well-being.

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.