Functions of technical information, historic record, analytic argument, which are integral and obvious to Dante's use of verse are now almost completely a part of the 'prosaic'.

Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent.

The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

Every one of my opponents, every one of my critics, will tell you that I am a generalist spread far too thin in an age when this is not done anymore, when responsible knowledge is specialized knowledge.

I find so much writing colourless, small in its means, unwilling to take stylistic risks. Often it goes wrong; I am not the one to judge. Sometimes, I hope, it goes right.

To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding