It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.