Ideas have consequences.

We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.

When you're on the wrong road, sometimes the most progressive man is the one who goes backwards first. As long as there are such people, hope lies in our future.

The man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetite.

Chivalry - ...a romantic idealism closely related to Christianity, which makes honor the guiding principle of conduct. Connected with this is the ancient concept of the gentleman.

It is likely ... that human society cannot exist without some source of sacredness. Those states which have sought openly to remove it have tended in the end to assume divinity themselves.

Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle.

Until the world perceives that "good" cannot be applied to a thing because it is our own, and "bad" because it is another's, there is no prospect of realizing community.

Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

The complete man, then, is the "lover" added to the scientist; the rhetorician to the dialectician.

We survive, in the confusionof a life reborn beyond reason.

I had a terrible fight with my wife on New Year's Eve. She called me a procrastinator. So I finished addressing the Christmas cards and left.

Late August still feels like summer here in the Ozarks, but it is the time of year the nighthawks are moving on to their South American wintering grounds.

She pressed her hand against her chest. No heart. So where did the love she felt come from?

Instant enlightenment is to give all your happiness away to others.

[My grandfather -a miner] had black lung, and he didn't talk about it much. It's almost like a combat veteran. But he witnessed some horrific things.

Enlightenment is really worth seeking. It is the only thing that gives you permanent happiness. When you experience the ecstasy of enlightenment, everything is alright.

I'm very English, and we don't talk about emotions publicly.

Everything you do is challenging, hopefully, because if it's not, it's boring.

Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.