“Why obliterate the exceptional merely in order to make the outstanding look finer than it was?”

“You are not here merely to making a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.”

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

“Why should I bring happiness to those I loathe by obliterating myself, when I can make them miserable just by existing?”

“In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.”

“What makes someone mythic is not whether or not he lived, or lived well, but whether or not he was larger than life. Mythic heroes were – and are – outrageous and outstanding. They are phenomenal. They distil some collective ideal or fantasy. That’s why we can speak of ‘the myth of John Lennon’, but not ‘the myth of John Major’. And it’s also why Theseus made it and Lycurgus didn’t.”