What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to A...
Think of this- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread.
You are a curse in my life!
Don't play with others, or at one day, you will be played by others.
And love is a word usedtoo much andmuchtoo soon.
I wish I had done everything on earth with you
It is fatal to suppose the great writer was too wise or too profound for us ever to understand him; to think of art so is not to praise but to murder it, for the next step after that tribute will be n...
WILDE: Oh — Bosie! (He weeps.) I have to go back to him, you know. Robbie will be furious but it can't be helped. The betrayal of one's friends is a bagatelle in the stakes of love, but the betrayal o...
Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times—letting pass infinite other examples—a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants to...
But vilifying those we love always alienates us from them to a certain extent. Idols should not be touched: the gilding comes off on the hands.
Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful? he said. It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever...
I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.
Truth is such a rare thing it is delightful to tell it,
In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity...
nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
They too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, a...
They did go on so, don't you think, those Victorian poets, they took themselves so horribly seriously," he said, pushing the lift button, summoning it from the depths.As it creaked up, Blackadder said...
Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of their...