Alexander Drunin

“Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers.”
― Gilbert Keith Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In a country that’s in a hurry to make the future, the names attached to the products are an enduring reassurance.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“The lovely thing about humanity is that at times one may be unaware of doing right, but one is always aware of doing wrong.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov