"Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise."

“When the modern scholar cites from a classic text, the quotation seems to burn a hole in his own drab page.”

“Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent.”

“The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.”

“Monotheism at Sinai, primitive Christianity, messianic socialism: these are the three supreme moments in which Western culture is presented with what Ibsen termed "the claims of the ideal." These are the three stages, profoundly interrelated, through which Western consciousness is forced to experience the blackmail of transcendence.”

“The age of the book is almost gone.”

“Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.”