“The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.”

“Scholars have an inordinate respect for long books, and have a terrible rancune against those that attempt to cheat on them. They cannot bear to imagine that short-cuts are possible, that specialism is not an inevitability, that learning need not be stoically endured. They cannot bear writers allegro, and when they read such texts—and even pretend to revere them—the result is (this is not a description without generosity) 'unappetizing'.”

“Evidently one cannot look for long at the Last Supper without ceasing to study it as a composition, and beginning to speak of it as a drama. It is the most literary of all great pictures, one of the few of which the effect may largely be conveyed — can even be enhanced — by description.”

“Young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.”

“As long as art cannot get free from the object, it will continue to be a description.”

“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”

“I cannot bear a mother's tears.”
Nequeam lacrimas perferre parentis.

“Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.”

“This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation.”

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”