You marry to be worthy of a gift, and want to say so out loud, but without shouting. One doesn't shout a prayer. Marriage is one of the few ceremonie… - John Leonard

You can't invent yourself as you maunder on. Your fabrications aren't going to impress the blood test, the urinalysis or the chest X-ray. Science is not amused.

To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms.

Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities, as a former general counsel for the Department of the Navy explains here, but also because war is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civilized scruple. There isn’t even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear. From an international leader in the cause of human rights and democratic values, the U.S. has turned into an unaccountable bully.