Plato's Academy, formally organized as a religious guild, had the aura of a great spirit reaching out to all listeners. But Aristotle's legacy was a … - Daniel J. Boorstin

Unlike the Western world of a surprising Creation, of man at war with nature, the world of Confucius transformed by Taoist and Buddhist currents saw man at home among transformations, procreations, and re-creations.

When photography appeared in the nineteenth century, it offered a new challenge to the mullahs’ theological acrobatics. Muslims wishing to be photographed remembered the Hadiths against pictorial representation. They were glad to be told that since photographs were made by God Himself through the agency of His Sun they were not under the ban of the paintings by presumptuous human artists. Yet in much of the Muslim world, photographs remained under the Prophet’s ban. A Muslim photographer in Delphi, who had spent many years successfully photographing people in groups, in an onrush of conscience finally destroyed all his plates.

[Reading is like] the sex act — done privately, and often in bed.