The frivolous can call me frivolous. I've always been most punctilious about important things. And I insist that no one knows better than I do the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils.

What shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.

Give me artificial flowers - porcelain and metal glories - neither fading nor decaying, forms unaging. Flowers of the splendid gardens of another place, where Forms and Styles and Knowledge dwell. I love flowers made of glass or gold, true Art's true gifts, their painted hues more beautiful than nature's, worked in nacre and enamel, with perfect leaves and branches.

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today.

He wasn't completely wrong, poor old Gemistus (let Lord Andronicus and the patriarch suspect him if they like), in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again.

Of what's to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing's troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever.

Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be.