I once asked Alice Longworth just why her father was such a war-lover. She denied that he was. I quoted her father's dictum: "No triumph of peace is quite as great as the supreme triumph of war." A sentiment to be echoed by yet another sissy in the next generation: "Meglio un giorno da leone che cento anni da pecora." ["Better a lion's day than a hundred years of a sheep's life."] "Oh, well," she said, "that's the way they all sounded in those days." But they did not all sound that way. Certainly Theodore, Senior, would have been appalled, and I doubt if Eleanor really approved of Uncle Teddy's war-mongering.As president, TR spoke loudly and carried a fair-sized stick. When Columbia wouldn't give him the land that he needed for a canal, he helped invent Panama out of a piece of Columbia; and he got his canal. He also installed the United States as the policeman of the Western Hemisphere. In order to establish an American hegemony in the Pacific, TR presided over the tail-end of the slaughter of more than half a million Filipinos who had been under the illusion that after the Spanish-American War they would be free to set up an independent republic under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo. But TR had other plans for the Philippines. Nice Mr. Taft was made the governor-general and one thousand American teachers of English were sent to the islands to teach the natives the sovereign's language.Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, TR's "open-door policy" to China had its ups and downs. In 1905 the Chinese boycotted American goods because of American immigration policies, but the United States was still able to establish the sort of beachhead on the mainland of Asia that was bound to lead to what TR would have regarded as a bully fine war with Japan. Those of us who were involved in that war did not like it all that much.

Unless them paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind.

An erection is simply hard evidence of personal growth.

"Some people will say to their children that they love them unconditionally straight to their face. But when they find out that they are a part of the rainbow, that is when they will show their true mischievous colors."

“You attract the right things when you have a sense of who you are.”

Women like us fall into two categories: dragons and fools. You must make sure they think of you as a dragon.

The moment she realized it – a small lifetime had already happened. It wasn’t what she thought or had imagined, but it’s what was always expected to be. It was always the way it was supposed to be. It wasn’t a sense of loss or moment of astute clarity like she had thought. It was quiet, silent, and a passing moment. It is the type of moment she knows she will eventually tell her own child will happen to them, but it is the unknowing and drawn out nature of it that sticks with a person and still can make their heartache. It came from her living, loving, and moving on. When her world has changed and no longer aligns with her past life. It is the nostalgia and “what if” that made it the cycle of not wanting to let go. She didn’t feel upset or angry because those feelings had consumed her for so long. It was the plain normalcy of sitting on a bench and seeing how unalike the two souls were that did it for her. It wasn’t a specific second or thing that was said – it was her looking at it from the lenses that she deeply was trying to put on for years, but never had the heart to do. It took a couple hours to get over the decade of time gone by. And so it passed.