Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

There is a crucial distinction to be made between innovation and originality. The second, unlike the first, can never break with what preceded it: to be original, an artist must also belong to the tradition from which he departs. To put it another way, he must violate the expectations of his audience, but he must also, in countless ways, uphold and endorse them.

Were we to aim in every case at the kind of supreme beauty exemplified by Sta Maria della Salute, we should end with aesthetic overload. The clamorous masterpieces, jostling for attention side by side, would lose their distinctiveness, and the beauty of each of them would be at war with the beauty of the rest.

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

Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.

Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.

Being unpopular is never easy; but being unpopular in a good cause is a shield against despair.