Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.

When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.

We cannot appreciate the art of any age without first acquiring an equivalent of the experience it depicts.

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.