Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.
- Michael Oakeshott
Rebecca Athens October 2013
The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.
- Herbert Marcuse
Viscountess Harriet de Rosiere at Mougins, Cannes. 1957.
**Photograph by Slim Aarons
We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. The experience of beauty guides us along this second path.
- Sir Roger Scruton, The Flight from Beauty
Books are the carriers of civilisation. Without books, history is silent.
- Henry David Thoreau
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
- Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, The Selected Letters Of Thomas Babington Macaulay