“Plato had one Big Idea from which everything else derived. He fundamentally defined reality as that which is permanent and unchanging. Only ideas are permanent and unchanging; anything material deteriorates and decays.”

“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”

“Plato in some sense anticipated the Catholic realism, as attacked by the heretical nominalism, by insisting on the equally fundamental fact that ideas are realities; that ideas exist just as men exist. Plato however seemed sometimes almost to fancy that ideas exist as men do not exist; or that the men need hardly be considered where they conflict with the ideas.”

“and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as he had always believed, but an immediate reality.”

“The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.”

“Mr. Codro's destiny is Ptolemaic; in other words, based on fiction. Ptolemaic says it all; it means above all fixed and unchanging, that is to say different from real life which is by nature changing and temporary. It means: not according to natural truth, but according to man's desire and the pretense inspired by his fear of dying and his desire for permanence.”