When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable.