I felt ashamed." "But of what? Psyche, they hadn't stripped you naked or anything?" "No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal -- of being a mortal." "But how could you help that?" "Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?

Not to be, but to seem, virtuous - it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

Anyone who endeavors to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened. You are embarking on something that is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.

Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says.

The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about moral values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.