Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true.
The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.
That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly.
Like my dad, I have a Christmas party most years. I like to celebrate and see as many people as possible.
I'm Jewish and my wife isn't so right now we're literally decorating a Christmas tree with Jewish stars draped around it.
The whole point of me doing a Christmas record and what I centered it around was the song 'Christmas with You' from the point-of-view of the soldiers in Iraq.
I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood.
At Christmas, it's my siblings running around the house, we're cooking, talking, laughing, loud and just crazy. It's beautiful chaos.
Tiny quails may not seem as impressive as a mammoth turkey, but there is something refreshing about a spread of individual birds on the Christmas table.
I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals.
From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.
The word 'equality' shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it's not the American way.
God is a freaking character, with enough foibles, tantrums, and paradoxical behaviors to supply a thousand screenplays. But who do you cast?
I don't gamble, because winning a hundred dollars doesn't give me great pleasure. But losing a hundred dollars pisses me off.
Nobody, from that standpoint, is any luckier than I am or will ever be any luckier than I am. It's great.
I can do small things in a great way.
Comedy does offer an avenue to television and film careers for untelegenic people that great drama does not.
Programmers work in bursts of productivity. Then, they let the brain rest and get back into it. A lot about the office world is not a great fit for me.
