They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating.

Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.

"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."

History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.