It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leprous.

A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. ... When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim toward reproduction.

Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.

What pillow can one have like a good conscience?

I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.

Resources follow vision.

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it - exactly and completely.

Estate taxes make every one of us nervous. If there’s an owner who isn’t, he has his head in the sand.

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. . . .

Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.

When I got off the soap I got offered all these, you know, 'women in jeopardy' -- I call them 'disease of the week' movies.

Many times I have learned that, you never judge a book by its cover. Like people, it is the inside that counts.

The main motivations were to try to leverage Google's expertise with large computer systems and to try to give something back to science