Tommy Howells

One mark of an idea that is hard to keep hold of is that the writer will contradict himself; it takes distance and time to see the convergence of opposites.

What you cannot solve by language, you will eventually solve by guns.

The way to be original is to say exactly what one thinks in the way one exactly thinks and feels it.

Thoreau, who has almost nothing, feels how lucky he is to have the universe on his side.

One of the advantages of being a master of language is you occasionally say the truth without knowing it.

Plato worried about shadows – perhaps he would have liked a world perpetually at high noon.

Institution: the echo of an inspiration no longer heard.

The twentieth century is a psychological, not an ethical age. It has gotten rid of sin, but it cannot seem to exorcise guilt.

Justice is empirical restraint on the nature of man.

Every culture must learn anew that there are limits to human arrogance.

America needs not only presidents but men with the capacity for being presidents.

We vote our hope, or we vote our fear.

Abraham Lincoln was the classic American statesman. He was democratic in the breath of his sympathy, republican in his regard for political law and order. He made the institution of the presidency what it is: the most powerful executive office created by free people.

Freedom becomes concrete when someone tries to take it away.

Americans cannot stand the hatred of others – this is why we will never meet the fate of the Romans or the English.

A symbol should liberate the soul, not press it to death.

To be contemporary you must know how you got there.

Tragedy is not bigger, but has more functioning parts. It is more complex, therefore tragedy is a larger and higher form of art. This is what happens when the literary critic is a biologist.

A really good book makes us feel that we have written it. Maybe there is only one great human spirit that writes books.

The islands in the river of our experience are the books we have read.