Jose Ortega y Gasset

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.

I love a good miso soup: it's fermented. It really helps with the immune system. I'll add tofu, carrots and seaweed.

Children, even infants, are capable of sympathy. But only after adolescence are we capable of compassion.