I talked about the human suffering in Iraq. And I also saw the need to advance a freedom agenda. Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens. I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived and the stir-up-the-hornet's- nest theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
The talker has found a hearer but not a listener; and though he may talk his very best for his own sake, you will find that his mental movements are erratic: they have no fixed centre and no definite object. His talk is like the water of a canal whose banks have given way, which rolls aimlessly hither and thither, without fulfilling any useful function, though it is the same water which was so helpful and serviceable, when it was confined within clearly marked limits by the restraining force of its earthy boundaries.
Highest good is like water. Because water excels in benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes closest to the way.
While it is all very well to distinguish happiness that is transient from that which is lasting, between ephemeral and genuine happiness, the only happiness it is meaningful to speak of when a person is dying from thirst is access to water.
You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!