352 Quotes by Roger Scruton

A society no more exists for the satisfaction of human needs, than a plant exists for its own health.

Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home and come to understand our own nature as spiritual beings.

The great artists of the past were aware that human life was full of chaos and suffering but they had a remedy for this and the name of that remedy was beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy, it shows human life to be worthwhile

For a certain kind of temperament, defeat is never defeat by reality, but always defeat by other people, often acting together as members of a class, tribe, conspiracy or clan.

In the event things got worse, and Spinoza gave up the idea of publishing the Ethics, believing that it would create such a cloud of hostility as to obscure, in the minds even of reasonable people, the real meaning of its arguments. Meanwhile, the book was read attentively, and at least one club existed for the express purpose of working through its proofs.

Throughout the proofs of the Ethics, therefore, the reader can never be certain whether the extraordinary ideas which are brought so compellingly before him are fiction or reality.

While Spinoza did not condemn marriage, he rejected it for himself, perhaps fearing the ‘ill temper of a woman’, and in any case recognizing in matrimony a threat to his scholarly interests.

Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.

... while we are familiar with the adverse effect of drink on an empty stomach, we are now witnessing the far worse effect of drink on an empty mind.