"Postmodernism will soon be confirmed as the American academic orthodoxy because it permits, ultimately, the summary dismissal of that last great inconvenience to the free and democratic intellect: the primary text."

"My late friend hated book-jackets, and ripped them all off immediately. I think he felt, somehow, that the book was still trying to sell him its contents after he had paid for it (or turn him in, if he had stolen it). Dejacketed, the book is anonymous and valueless. To translate something immediately into this state is an unequivocal act of proprietorship. You remove a book-jacket just as you make a lover naked: before their complete possession, they must be removed from the currency."

"Yes, I know Marcus Aurelius or Vauvenargues or Chesterton has already said this, and far better; but let’s face it—you weren’t listening then either."

"In the end, the desolate age always turns instinctively to Classicism, which if nothing else legislates against certain kinds of disappointment."

"I’m always amused by those commentators who nervously insist that the working class’s constant use of the word fuck is really just “a form of punctuation.” It is, however, no more or less then what they dread: an inexhaustible river of smelted wrath, a Phlegethon of ancestral grievance."

"To be intelligent without ideas is the privilege of the artist."

"Progress is hubris and nemesis fused together."

"There is nothing more common than transforming a duty which inconveniences us into an "ethical problem.""

"Every non-hierarchical society is divided in two."

"Whoever betrays us never forgives us for his act of betrayal."

"The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs."

"The enemies of myth are not the friends of reality but of triviality."

"Politics is the pastime of empty souls."

"To have a dialog with those who do not share our basic premises is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time."

"A cultivated soul is one where the din of the living does not drown out the music of the dead."

"Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it."

"An individual declares himself a member of some group or other with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name."

"Poetry has died, asphyxiated by metaphors."

""To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute."

"The racist is annoyed because he secretly suspects that the races are equal. The anti-racist is annoyed because he secretly suspects that they are not."

"Of God one doesn't speak with any precision or seriousness except in poetry."

"Many things seem defensible until we look at their defenders."

"The imagination is the only place in the universe where it is possible to live."

"Only the problems of his time seem important to the fool."

"To be authentically modern is, in each and every age, a sign of mediocrity."

"Nations and individuals, with rare exceptions, comport themselves with decency only when circumstances permit no other choice."

"Optimism is never faith in progress, but hope for a miracle."

"Stupid ideas are immortal. Each new generation invents them anew."

"The stupidity of an old man imagines itself to be wisdom; that of an adult, experience; that of a youth, genius."

"He who speaks of his "generation" admits that he's part of a herd."

"Every solution seems trivial to the one who does not understand the problem."

"The cultured man has the obligation to be intolerant."

"For the myth of a past golden age, present day humanity substitutes the myth of a future plastic age."

"The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it."

"It is unjust to reproach the writers of today with bad taste, when the very notion of taste is dead."

"Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal."

"The punishment of the idealist consists in the triumph of his cause."

"Egalitarian ideas distort our perception of the present and, in addition, mutilate our vision of the past."

"To be civilized is to be able to criticize what we believe without ceasing to believe in it."

"Civilization seems to be the invention of a species now extinct."

"Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities."

"In the Christian obsessed with "social justice" it isn't easy to discern whether charity is flourishing or faith is expiring."

"Philosophy's aim is not to paint new objects but to give their true color to familiar objects."

"The Church used to absolve sinners; today it has the gall to absolve sins."

"I distrust every idea that doesn't seem obsolete and grotesque to my contemporaries."

"There are not a few French historians who think that the history of the world is an episode in the history of France."

"The "ivory tower" has a bad reputation only among the inhabitants of intellectual hovels."