“The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity.”

“As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.”

“How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.”

“[...] death follows us around for a reason. It's because death is our best adviser. There is nothing more powerful than a person who is prepared to live right now, in this instant, fully accepting that this may be their last moment on earth.”

“Studies have indicated that the tone of voice may be more important than any other element in our response.”

“and men of science,' cries dixon, 'may be but the simple tools of others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a hammer knows of a house.”