Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.
It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.
Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next.
States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.
Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification.
Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge; and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.
Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.
A philosopher who says, ‘There are no truths, only interpretations,’ risks the retort: ‘Is that true, or only an interpretation?’
The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language.
Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity – the habit of saying “good morning” to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.
Beauty is assailed from two directions – by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.
Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.
When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.
Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.
Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.
In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person’s taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion that there is a difference between good and bad taste, or that it matters what you look at or read or listen to.
Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.
The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world.
Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.