“Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.”

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.

One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.

And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.

If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.

Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word.

In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.

You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded,” to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Aristotle defined virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life.

But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world – a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one – is to fix yourself.

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.

Always place your becoming above your current being.

Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong?

Dare, instead, to be dangerous. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express (or at least become aware of) what would really justify your life.

If society is corrupt, but not the individuals within it, then where did the corruption originate? How is it propagated? It’s a one-sided, deeply ideological theory.

No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.

There is a world of created beings – living things, animals, entelechies, and souls – in the least part of matter. Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

My spirit animal probably like a turtle, because I have no concept of time.

We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us from our Heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves.

I never claimed to be a predator, but right now she’s certainly the prey.

Don’t be something you’re not. Unless you can be a fabulous unicorn. Always be a fabulous unicorn.

I’m very involved with PETA – People for Ethical Treatment of Animals – and Greenpeace and a lot of women’s shelter and clothing giveaways.

A mouse trying hard to come off as a lion.