I promise God does not care how you do your laundry.

The worst failure is the failure to try.

First rule of chess: the only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.

Another way to articulate this idea is by distinguishing between an enchanted view of the world and a disenchanted view. The disenchanted view is that reality is "just" a bunch of meaningless objects to which we assign meaning. But the enchanted view is that, because of the connection between the physical and the spiritual, everything in the physical world has some intrinsic meaning, whether or not we're aware of it. Even if you're skeptical about things like karma, curses, or holy water, you probably have some vague sense of a deeper meaning in the natural world. The glory of the stars on a dark night, the mystery you sense at the heart of a forest, the profundity of the sea, the energy and beauty of the human being-these are things that inspire us and beckon us. We have a sense of their deep significance even if we cannot explain why.

This out of all will remain—
They have lived and have tossed:
So much of the game will be gain,
Though the gold of the dice has been lost.

Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

The scholar's greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.

"Bless your heart, Molly Maid," she says, throwing her arms around me again. "Don't believe what anyone says. You're not a freak. Or a robot. And I'll never forget this as long as I live. You'll see. I swear, I won't forget."

What would our hosting style look like if we considered it our role to first offer love, then food? Perhaps a little less time would be spent in prepping an extra side dish, and a little more time would be given to preparing our hearts to receive our guests with loving attention.

I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.

If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

My mother uses the childhood name as a sort of verbal spear to ambush my adult self with a serious question about the preparations I’ve made for my own demise and for that of my son, Akari. So the meaning of her section of the poem is, essentially, that the most important thing I need to do in order to prepare for my own death is to get Akari ready for his trip to the forest, which may well precede mine.