Perhaps our Irish friends should not so completely turn their backs on their historical dishes, no matter how many jokes they might have to endure.

It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.

Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.

Currently, 94 out of 100 of us pay the Social Security tax all year round.

Those who actually hate animals to the point of being cruel to them are outcasts to the rest of us, no matter where in the world they live.

Respect and affection for animals, particularly those who share our homes, recognize no geographic borders.

America has faced much more difficult times, including potential national extinction, without flinching.

A salute from this corner to President Bush for saying he was willing to investigate raising or eliminating the cap on salaries subject to the Social Security tax.

For some reason, on that sparkling afternoon last week, I actually saw the coal that was passing by and it set me to thinking how important coal was to our everyday lives when I was a little boy.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

In matters large and small, many people seemed concerned about churlishness, an ugliness in our relationships that appears to be increasing rather than decreasing.

Why bother getting married, going through all the pomp and pageantry, if you didn't think it was going to last? It was far easier to live in sin and not have to deal with the paperwork.

Everyone should have a hippie painter anarchist in their lives. It's the guys in silvered aviators with guns that you've got to be wary of.

The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon.

Humility is the only defence against vanity

You can only end a negotiation for peace if you begin it.

Cause everbody care. Black, white, deep down we all do.

It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

Backward we traveled to reclaim the day Before we fell, like Icarus, undone; All we find are altars in decay And profane words scrawled black across the sun.

If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.