“The study of the past is the main portal through which culture is acquired.”

“The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott notes that one of the signs of being cold today is that one knows what one doesn't have to know.”

“For reasons no one has yet explained, the Internet is at once riveting and a great killer of concentration.”

“The acquisition of culture requires repose, sitting quietly in a room with a book, or alone with one's thoughts even any crowded concert or art museum.”

“Vladimir Nabokov, contemning readers who "identified" with characters in fiction, remarked that the best readers identify with the artist.”

“Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correc...”

“A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.”

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“[N]one of us drinks the chalice of our existence to the last drop. None of us is fully obedient. Each of us falls short of the human nature entrusted to us.”