To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.

Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep

It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.

Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.

There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.

If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.