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

There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.

The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.

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.

Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.