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

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished.

The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.

Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music.

I am not a conservative — neo or paleo. Conservatism is a respectable outlook... I just do not happen to be that animal.

The humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.

All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible and Homer through Joyce and Proust.