Genius insight into writing, ideas, and culture (From Nicolás Dávila)

A writer who has intense but mixed feelings about his subject writes better than a writer who has one-sided feelings: "The writer who loves or hates is less persuasive than the one who loves and hates."

You don't create a unified worldview with reason, but by investigating the spiritual urge that gives birth to your ideas: "The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them."

There is no such thing as past or contemporary literature - the right reader can learn from books of all ages: All literature is contemporary to the reader who knows how to read.

How do we know if our feelings are authentic and trustworthy - and not just temporary chemical highs? Authentic feelings are often tied with corresponding clear thoughts: "The authenticity of the feeling depends on the clarity of the thought."

An agreement on the fundamental issues is essential to productive dialogue: "To have a dialog with those who do not share our basic premises is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time."

Neither philosophy nor science is much use in each other's domain: "If philosophy does not resolve any scientific problem, science, in its turn, does not resolve any philosophical problem."

The opposite of myth is not rationality, but shallowness: "The enemies of myth are not the friends of reality but of triviality." Myths deal with deep and timeless questions - to throw all myths out of the window is to only be left with trivial queries.

On architecture: "In the idiom of modern architecture nothing complicated can be said." The apparently superfluous details of classical architecture are actually ways to capture complex ideas. The brute minimalism of contemporary architecture leaves no room for subtext.

The war against differences, distinctions, and hierarchies leads to only one outcome: "Those who proclaim that the noble is despicable end up by proclaiming that the despicable is noble."