...the Oxford system, which did not require students to take set courses or be tested except at the end of three years, encouraged them to read widel… - Yi-Fu Tuan

The world feels spacious and friendly when it accommodates our desires, and cramped when it frustrates them.

Words designate, but they also evoke a sense of something, and, when they do, they function as metaphors. ...Metaphors enrich life, making it more vivid.

America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, which has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D.C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia.