352 Quotes by Roger Scruton

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don’t. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.

The consolation of an imaginary thing is still a real consolation.

nacionalismo, como uma ideologia, é perigoso apenas à medida que as ideologias são perigosas. Ocupa o espaço deixado vago pela religião e, ao fazê-lo, estimula o verdadeiro crente a venerar a ideia nacionalista e a buscar nesta concepção aquilo que ela não pode oferecer — o propósito último da vida, o caminho da redenção e o consolo para todas as aflições.

It is a great pity we had only one bottle not enough to revive that proof of the afterlife, though enough to revive some gentle regrets

Our gardens are symbols of home rather than seduction. Young people with fire in their blood are seldom found in them. The garden is the scene of middle age, of the slow passage from sexual excitement to domestic routine.

In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.

The relation of the soul to the body is like that of a house to its bricks. The soul is a principle of organisation, which governs the flesh and endows it with meaning. It is no more separable from the flesh than is the house from its bricks, even if the soul may survive the gradual replacement of every bodily part.

The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.

Like adverts, today's works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell except themselves.