Sentences

Thoughts and aphorisms on art and style, taste, self-knowledge, psychology, religion, happiness, self-interest, pride, self-reliance, vices and virtues, politics, thinking and genius, illusion, and the purpose of life and death. Influenced by thinkers such as Pascal and Nietzsche, this collection of brief maxims and longer paragraphs argues for energy and order, imagination and tradition, and self-reliance within strong institutions, and attacks the facile humanism, optimism, progress, levelling, technophilia and rationalism of the Enlightenment. Includes a wealth of quotes from writers such as Blake, Dickinson, Yeats, Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Dr Johnson, Emerson and Wilde.