As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.

Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.

To be free is often to be lonely.

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.