A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.

Nothing in life was ever clearly drawn, obviously just, or totally emotionally satisfying, but the moment-to-moment stuff of reality featured infinitely more complication, sleaze, struggle, true beauty, unfairness, profundity, passion, and depth of consciousness than...

In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll’s, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was ‘Some Mistakes...

Irony takes nothing away from pathos.

He wasn’t mad, he was sad.

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

The moment you stop chasing happiness, you become happy.

Nowadays the standards had plummeted so far that I failed even at being a failure. I silently packed up. Nothing else was left. They had even robbed me of self-pity

The more we listen to the voices of others, voices unlike our own, the more we remain open to the transcendent forces that save us from idolatry. The more we listen to ourselves, the more...