12 quotes
But it can be almost as objectionable to be made to take part in something as to be forbidden to do so.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
One test of un homme sérieux is that it is possible to learn from him even when one radically disagrees with him.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
He could see events being mutated into propaganda before his very eyes, even in the information headquarters of an ostensible democracy.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
I once heard Susan Sontag, in conversation with Umberto Eco, define the polymath as one “who is interested in everything, and in nothing else.”
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
Yet despite his Edwardian and near-Victorian provenance he remains more contemporary and relevant to us than many authors of a much later date.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
Patriotic and tribal feelings belong to the squalling childhood of the human race, and become no more charming in their senescence. They are particularly unattractive when evinced by a superpower.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it; it kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
Thus we learn again that what people set down day to day is of greater value than what they try to synthesize retrospectively into a grand sweep or theory.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
But gallows humor is inseparable from dentistry: at one point I heard the good doctor say, as he plowed through the layers of plaque and tartar, “Good news. I’ve found some of your teeth.”
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
Friends, we represent a minority, but Literature is on our side. With so many fine books to be read, so much to be studied and known, there is no need to bore ourselves with this rubbish.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
In my country of birth the great new fictional practitioners have in their front rank names like Rushdie, Ishiguro, Kureishi, Mo. This attainment on their part makes me oddly proud to be whatever I am, and convinces me that internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
Did you appreciate that each column of the Parthenon makes a very slight inward incline, so that if projected upward into space they would eventually steeple themselves together at a symmetrical point in the empyrean? The “rightness” is located somewhere between the beauty of science and the science of beauty.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)