Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.

Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.

Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?