If God is love, then God has no stepchildren to love.
Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure.
The only hope of preserving what is best, lies in the practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect for opinions that are not ours.
Culture is like wealth; it makes us more ourselves, it enables us to express ourselves
In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.
What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is something in the softness of the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses us and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter.
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author?
A high-ranking Syrian official in DC laughed when he heard I was reading Michel Aflaq and writing this book. He said, "Let me tell you something. There are no Baathists, no one believes this stuff, this is stuff you read in school because it's assigned to you. Maybe someone believed it, but no one really believes it. " And I thought that was really interesting to hear, because the ideology of Baathism was presented so often to Americans as the core of what's wrong.
All that you give to others you are giving to yourself.
There are the those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.
The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.