In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.

Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.

Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past

The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.

When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.

A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable

The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.