Tradition, in its essence, is something simultaneously meta-historical and dynamic: it is an overall ordering force in the service of principles that have the chrism of a superior legitimacy (we may even call them 'principles from above').

Being and stability are regarded by our contemporaries as akin to death; they cannot live unless they act, fret, or distract themselves with this or that. Their spirit (provided we can still talk about a spirit in their case) feeds only on sensations and on dynamism, thus becoming the vehicle for the incarnation of darker forces.

Everybody enjoys the freedom he deserves, which is measured by the stature and dignity of his person or by his function, and not by the abstract and elementary fact of merely being a 'human being' or a 'citizen'.

But, the true reason for the success of such new expositions [translated Eastern religious texts] is to be found where they are the most accommodating, least rigid, least severe, most vague, and ready to come to easy terms with the prejudices and weaknesses of the modern world. Let everyone have the courage to look deeply into himself and to see what it is that he really wants.

Tradition, in its essence, is something simultaneously meta-historical and dynamic: it is an overall ordering force in the service of principles that have the chrism of a superior legitimacy (we may even call them 'principles from above').

The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American 'mind,' puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization.

[T]he regime of diversions, surrogates, and tranquilizers that pass for today's 'distractions' and 'amusements' does not yet allow the modern woman to foresee the crisis that awaits her when she recognizes how meaningless are those male occupations for which she has fought, when the illusions and the euphoria of her conquests vanish, and when she realizes that, given the climate of dissolution, family and children can no longer give her a sense of satisfaction in life.