Nicolás Gómez Dávila

"To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.

Optimism is never faith in progress, but hope for a miracle.

Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.

To depend on God alone is our true autonomy.

Imitation, in the arts, is less harmful than rules.

A happy existence is as much of a model as a virtuous one.

Ritual is an instrument of the sacred. Every innovation is a profanation.

Poetry has died, asphyxiated by metaphors.

To think like our contemporaries is a recipe for prosperity and stupidity.

The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation.

God is a nuisance for modern man.

The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.

The writer who loves or hates is less persuasive than the one who loves and hates.

The imagination is the only place in the universe where it is possible to live.

Every marriage of an intellectual with the communist party ends in adultery.