More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.

In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia. ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.

Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.

Books are humanity in print.

The power to command frequently causes failure to think.

We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.

In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.