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.

Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next

A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure

Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification

The relation of the soul to the body is like that of a house to its bricks. The soul is a principle of organisation, which governs the flesh and endows it with meaning. It is no more separable from the flesh than is the house from its bricks, even if the soul may survive the gradual replacement of every bodily part.

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