The sirens sing sotto voce these days, and the young already have enough wax in their ears to pass them by without danger.

The facile economic and psychological debunking of the theoretical life cannot do away with its irreducible beauties.

There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.

The substance of my being has been informed by the books I learned to care for.

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.

This nation's impulse is toward the future, and tradition seems more of a shackle to it than an inspiration.