wandering lighted

'If we treated the great church as a public promenade, or rather as a splendid international salon, the fault was not wholly our own, and indeed practically there was little profanity in such an attitude. One’s attitude was insignificant, and the bright immensity of the place protected conversation and even gossip. It struck one not as a particular temple, but as formed by the very walls of the faith that has no small pruderies to enforce.'

truth-priority

'The problem with strategic irony is that it avoids responsibility; it is ‘defensive’, ‘pusillanimous’, ‘craven’—a mere ‘manipulation of tone’, little more than ‘attitudinizing’. It puts the emphasis on the writer’s relationship with the reader, rather than on the matter of the poem, and so it is both tiresomely ingratiating and contemptibly apologetic.'

• Intelligence with regard to form, which is, or at least should be a basic prerequisite of all poetry, may be the only thing which can, when raised high enough, replace affectation with artfulness, and remove the obligation to irony—for those who wish to avoid it. I mean to suggest that both affectation and artfulness, which are usually taken for bad qualities, are in another sense fundamental elements of poetry (and lyric, perhaps, especially).

Hearsay

• 'Philosophy of mind is more than marketing trick. But it’s hard to prevent hot and trendy topics from blending together, even when they themselves are much weightier: ISIS, political correctness, a dog playing a cowbell, an actress giving a speech at the Oscars, a dress. They are all just content. Any content will do.'

'Aside from the serious risks to an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy associated with treating mere conjecture and opinion as objective reporting, there is the danger of contagion. Unless people are fortunate enough to have studied argumentation or are otherwise capable of separating at least reasonable objectivity from fiction, they’re likely to be easily led. A functional democracy is underpinned by — indeed impossible without — informed citizens.  Aristotle argued for teaching the techniques of persuasion so that people might protect themselves from distraction and dishonesty. Without such awareness, each of us risks becoming the easy victim of modern day sophistry.'