I didn't understand the value and meaning of education

The look on his face is a complete shock. I didn't understand the value and meaning of education, the hardship and stress it causes most parents and children. I've never thought of education like that. School was always a place I managed to escape, not a thing to be treasured. Setting aside the stock was merely something I did because Frankie specifically mentioned college and I wanted to help. When I saw what it meant to him, however, I was the one who got educated.

A. Agassi, Open (2009), 230-1

Have you never discussed philosophy with them?

'Have you never discussed philosophy with them?'
'No. We're not Germans.'

J. Le Carre, The spy who came in from the cold (1963), 138

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas

As for Tom, the fact that he had 'some woman in New York' was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1926), 27

Forza Italia!

(History repeating edition)

Forza Italia!, which is suspected of Neo-Fascist leanings. My contacts in Benevento dismiss it with scorn as just another maniac right-wing movement backed by the landlords and the rural mafia, run in this case by  a half-demented latifundista who proclaims himself a reincarnation of Garibaldi.

N. Lewis, Naples '44 (1978), 176

Heresy may advertise the existence of bad theology

Heresy may advertise the existence of bad theology. But it also indicates that men are thinking.

G.L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (1940), 3

A modern historian prefers to leave it undescribed

The cause of this sedition [the run up to the massacre at Thessalonica by Theodosius' troops] is so connected with the unnatural vices of the Graeco-Roman population of that period, that a modern historian prefers to leave it undescribed

T.Hodgkin, Italy and her invaders (1899), 179-180

Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?

'They never go near the Louvre,' I said, 'or, if they do, it's only because one of their absurd reviews has suddenly "discovered" a master who fits in with that month's aesthetic theory. Half of they are out to make  a popular splash like Picabia; the other half quite simply want to earn their living doing advertisements for Vogue and decorating nightclubs. And the teachers still go on trying to make them paint like Delacroix.'
'Charles,' said Cordelia, 'Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?'
'Great bosh.'
'Oh, I'm so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said we shouldn't try and criticize what we didn't understand. Now I shall tell I have had it straight from a real artist and snubs to her.'

E. Waugh, Brideshead revisited (1945), 177

The languor of Youth – how unique and quintessential it is!

The languor of Youth – how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth – all save this – come and go with us through life. These things are a part of life itself; but languor – the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse – that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it

E. Waugh, Brideshead revisited (1945), 94

Musicals are for the sorts of people who, even though their coach will be awaiting outside the theatre after the show, take their umbrellas

Musicals are for people who are too thick for opera and too square for pop music. They are for people from the sticks, who migrate en masse  to the major capitals of the world where they enjoy themselves by watching things they have seen before at twice the price they paid last time. Musicals are for the sorts of people who, even though their coach will be awaiting outside the theatre after the show, take their umbrellas.

E. Brockes, What would Babra do? (2008), 45

[Note: this is neither my view, nor that of the author. I love musicals, I just thought this was a brilliant a summary of the (unfair) contempt in which they are held]

The people of Montaillou were not yet afraid of either sex or idleness

The actual morality of the domus of Montaillou was very different from that created later by Protestant and Catholic, Puritan and Jansenist reformations, both kinds intolerant of sex and anxious to make people work. Whether they were Catholic or Cathars or in between, the people of Montaillou were not yet afraid of either sex or idleness.

E. La Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, tr. B. Bray (1978), 331

You have to be a mutton chop, not an earl

[A] Senior conservative, when at lunch, has little leisure for observing anything not immediately on the table in front of him. To attract attention in the dining-room of the Senior Conservative club between the hours of one and two-thirty, you have to be a mutton chop, not an earl.

P.G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh (1915), 38

Never for a second are the words Coca-Cola out of one's sight

The propaganda drive of this firm has been so intensive and so ruthlessly efficient in its execution, that never for a second are the words Coca-Cola out of one's sight. It is on a scale that nobody who has not crossed the Atlantic can hope to grasp. They are printed on almost everything you touch. Everywhere the beaming heroines of these giant advertisements smirk and simper and leer. It becomes the air you breathe, a way of life, an entire civilization - the Coca-Cola age, yoke-fellow of the age of the Atomic Bomb.

P. Leigh Fermor, The Traveller's Tree (1950), 48-49

The alphabet was a founding technology of information

The alphabet was a founding technology of information. The telephone, the fax machine, the calculator, and, ultimately, the computer are only the latest innovations devised for saving, manipulating, and communicating knowledge ... In all the languages of earth there is only one word for alphabet (alfabet, alfabeto). The alphabet was invented only once. All known alphabets, used today or found buried on tablets and stone, descend from the same original ancestor, which arose near the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea, sometime not much before 1500 BCE

J. Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (2011), Kindle loc. 199 & 562

The synod made an ass of itself; as synods always do

The synod made an ass of itself; as synods always do. It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing--otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men

A. Trollope, The Claverings (1867), Kindle loc. 4850

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.


J. Austen, Persuasion (1818), Complete works Kindle edition, location 29717
(read March 2011)

It only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in

[Awesomely, I've worked out how to get at my kindle notes, allowing me to turbo-charge this. I'll spare you a full backup, but I've got to add a few from a while ago]



Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus


G. Elliot, Adam Bede (1859), Kindle edition, location 7367
(read March 2011)

The young have such cheap, hard judgement

The young have such cheap, hard judgement

J. Galsworthy, To let (1921), 545

The most truly eccentric dresser in the country is the Queen

The most truly eccentric dresser in the country is the Queen, who pays no attention whatsoever to fashion, mainstream or otherwise, continuing to wear the same highly idiosyncratic style of clothing (a kind of modified 1950s-retro look, if you had to define it in fashion-speak, bur very much to her own personal taste) with no regard for anyone else's opinion. Because she is the Queen, people call her style 'classic' and 'timeless' rather than eccentric or weird, politely overlooking the fact that absolutely no-one else dresses in this particular way.

K. Fox, Watching the English (2004), 271

In the security bred of many harmless marriages

In the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hothouse flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from a wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always wild!

J. Galsworthy, The man of property (1906), Wordsworth complete edition, 105

The man whose voice had resonated from the tomb of exile

The man [de Gaulle] whose voice had resonated from the tomb of exile and emboldened its cringing listeners in their darkened rooms had stridden Paris like a giant. Though his gauntness bore poignant testimony to four long years of London fog and English food, he still had the bearing of a leader. he had stooped beneath the arc de Triomphe and laid a cross of white roses on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He had walked the length of the Champs-Élysées cheered from every tree and lamp post, saluted by officers whose cratered cheeks were moist with tears and kissed by pretty girls who darted from the crowd waving hankerchiefs and ribbons.

G. Robb, The Parisians (2010), 317

Baron Haussmann will not be asked to die for his Emperor

Baron Haussmann will not be asked to die for his Emperor, but he is prepared to sacrifice his reputation, which is besmirched almost every day - by liberals and socialists, who forget that the poor now have hospital beds and proper graves; by nostalgic bohemians, who forget everything; and even by his own social equals, who find the inconvenience of moving house too heavy a price to pay for the most beautiful city in the world

G. Robb, The Parisians (2010), 147

One can and may blame the wicked Fourth Crusade

Though one may bitterly deplore, as I do most fervently, that the Turks ever set foot in Europe, it would be absurd to blame them for the destruction of the Byzantine Empire as it would be to arraign the laws of hydrostatics for damage by flood. But one can and may blame the wicked Fourth Crusade for making that destruction inevitable and bringing about the wreck of eastern Europe for centuries

P.L. Fermor, Mani (1958), 295

Nobody listens, but it is never turned off

The instrument [the radio] is nearly always faulty, all these sounds, turned on full blast, are strung in the connecting thread of an unbroken, ear-drum-puncturing and bat-like scream. Nobody listens, but it is never turned off. Towns are pandemonium. Every shop and cafe sends out a masterless, hydrophobic roar. These rabid wirelesses should be hunted out and muzzled or shot down like mad dogs. In the heart of the country, the silence of the most desolate places is suddenly rent by the blood-curdling howl of a rogue wireless set. ... But, like religion, it has been late in reaching the Mani, and among the towers a blessed silence prevails.

P.L. Fermor, Mani (1958), 144

Each village was a long solid sheaf of towers

Each village was a long solid sheaf of towers. There were scores of them climbing into the sky in a rustic metropolis, each tower seeming to vie with the others in attaining  more preposterous height: a vision as bewildering as the distant skyline of Manhattan or that first apparition of gaunt medieval skyscrapers that meets the eyes of the traveller approaching San Giminiano aross the Tuscan plain. But there were no bridges or ships here, no bastioned town wall or procession of cypresses to detract from the bare upward thrust of all these perpendiculars of sun-refracting facet and dark shadow. The tops were sawn off flat, the gun slits invisible. These two mad villages of Kitta and Nomia shot straight out of the rock in a grove of rectangular pipes the sides facing in every direction so that some of the towers were flanked with a stripe of shade, some turned bare and two-dimensional towards the sun, others twisted in their sockets and seems to present two visible and equal sides, one in light and one in shade, of symmetrical prisms. Nothing moved and in the trembling and fiery light they had the hallucinating improbability of a mirage.

P.L. Fermor, Mani (1958), 82

None of the sensible Ephrussi children would go so far as that

It was understood that none of the sensible Ephrussi children would go so far as that [suicide]. Melancholy had its place. A café. It shouldn't be brought home.

E. de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), 133

It was only when there were questions from the floor that the evening became lively

It was only when there were questions from the floor that the evening became lively. People on both sides of the debate shouted and told stories of a personal nature which they mistook for proof of whatever it was they believed.

H. Jacobson, The Finckler Question (2010), 283

She looked too amazed by life to be English

She looked too amazed by life to be English. Her curls were too curly. Her lips were too big. Her teeth too white and even, like one big tooth arc of tooth with regular vertical markings. And her breasts had too much elevation and attack to be English. Had Jane Austen's heroines had breasts like these they would not have worried about ending up without a husband.

H. Jacobson, The Finckler Question (2010), 83

T'Hami at this time played golf to a handicap of four

T'hami [the Pasha of Marrakesh] at this time played golf to a handicap of four. (It is illogical, but strange, that the image of an amateur golf champion should be so hard to reconcile with that of an owner of active dungeons.)

G. Maxwell, Lords of the Atlas (1966), 200

A Second Awakening was driven by the evangelical energy of the frontier

Now, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a Second Awakening was driven by the evangelical energy of the frontier. In 1776, some 10 per cent of Americans were church-goers; by 1815, it was a quarter; by 1914, it was half.

S. Sebag-Montefiore, Jerusalem (2011), 337

One parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones

I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

W. Cather, My Ántonia (1918), 328

What unprotected faces they were

what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made them defenceless. Those boys had no practised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of those drifting, case-hardened labourers who never marry or have children of their own. Yet he was so fond of children.

W. Cather, My Ántonia (1918), 83-84

Jerusalem had no natural industries except holiness

Jerusalem had no natural industries except holiness

S Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem (2011), 138

A man in his position has to exercise considerable care in his choice of secretaries

A man in his position has to exercise considerable care in his choice of secretaries, ruling out anything that might have done well in the latest Miss America contest. But you could certainly describe her appearance as pleasant. She gave me the impression of being one of those quiet, sympathetic girls whom you could tell your troubles to in the certain confidence of having your hand held and your head patted. The sort of girl you could go to and say 'I say, I've just committed a murder and it's worrying me rather', and she would reply 'There, there, try not to think about it, it's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody'.

P.G. Wodehouse, Much obliged, Jeeves (1971), 42

We exchanged significant glances

We exchanged significant glances. At least, I gave him a significant glance and he looked like a stuffed frog, his habit when being discreet. He knows just how I'm situated as regards M. Bassett, but naturally we don't discuss it except by going into the sig-glance-stuffed-frog routine. I mean, you can't talk about a thing like that. I don't know if it would actually come under the head of speaking lightly of a woman's name, but it wouldn't be seemly, and the Woosters are sticklers for seemliness. So, for that matter, are the Jeeveses.

P.G. Wodehouse, Still upper lip, Jeeves (1963), 34

Greco-Roman we are

Greco-Roman we are, and, as the years of crisis deepen, the heritage of imperial Rome becomes more than ever  a millstone round our necks and ball and chain on our feet. On the other hand as we intensify our countless billions of candle-power so that they threaten to consume us, the luminous glow of the Greek city-state seems to penetrate more searchingly into every corner of our civilisation. ... They who laid the intellectual foundations of the western world were the most fanatical players and organizers of games that the world has ever known.

C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (1963), 202

Strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch

Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

And some men eased themselves like setting hens onto the nest of death.

History was secreted in the glands of a million historians. We must get out of this banged up century, some said, out of this cheating, murderous century of riot and secret death, of scrabbling for public lands and damn well getting them by any means at all.

J. Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952) 109

The only solution which at first seemed definitely excluded was the Bonapatist one

The only solution which at first seemed definitely excluded was the Bonapatist one. In 1871 the political and administrative personnel of the Second Empire had followed its predecessors into the increasingly overcrowded Valhalla of defunct regimes, whose memories filled the history books and whose ghosts haunted the French political scene.

A. Cobban, A History of Modern France Volume 3: 1871 - 1962 (1964), 11

You can't press your suit and another fellow's trousers simultaneously

If Catsmeat had been tied up with a lot of correspondence of this type [love letters], he wouldn't have had much time for attending to my wardrobe, of course. You can't press your suit and another fellow's trousers simultaneously

P.G. Wodehouse, The mating season (1949), 119

His brow was sicklied o'er

Yet now, as I say, he was low-spirited. It stuck out a mile. His brow was sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought and his air was that of a man who, if he had said 'Hallo, girls', would have said it like someone in a Russian drama announcing that Gradpapa had hanged himself in the barn.

P.G. Wodehouse, The mating season (1949), 15

Mrs Elton was wanting notice, which nobody had inclination to pay

Emma doubted their getting on very well; for Mr Knightley seemed little disposed for conversation; Mrs Elton was wanting notice, which nobody had inclination to pay, and she was herself in a worry of spirits which would have made her prefer being silent

J. Austen, Emma (1816), 228

I met Che Guevara sharp as a cat

I met Che Guevara sharp as a cat in Cuba, and Guy Burgess swollen with drink and self-reproach in Moscow, and Kim Philby, whom I thought I could have loved, deceiving us all in Lebanon. I watched Eichmann humdrum and offended within the bullet-proof glass of his courtroom cage, the common man personified as the murderer he was. I saw Powers the aerial spy paraded before the People's Court, the peasants stumbling in to give their evidence like figures from Tolstoy, the thick-set judges solemn at their dais, the sense of vast unseen forces at play behind those puppets. I watched my own beloved army floundering in degradation as it was forced, year by year, from its last imperial footholds, now and then spitting back like a cornered animal, and forced at last into that distasteful ignominy, Suez.

J. Morris, Conundrum (1974), 79-80

The place and function of rhetoric in the public life of the Empire had changed

The place and function of rhetoric in the public life of the Empire had changed: between the reign of Augustus and the end of the second century, every city in the Greek east that still had any vestige of democracy shed it on coming under the umbrella of Rome

A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), 76

In Paris do they always have the true answer?

"Therefore you don't have a single answer to your questions?"
"Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris."
"In Paris do they always have the true answer?"
"Never," William said, "but they are very sure of their errors."

U.Eco, The Name of the Rose (1980), 306

Bad Table manners have broken up more marriages than infidelity

Breaking with convention, I watched Gigi last night. There were some fantastic lines (the script is here). Here my favourites:

Aunt Alicia: Bad Table manners have broken up more marriages than infidelity

Aunt Alicia: [Learning] English? I supose we must. they refuse to learn French

Gigi: She is common
Gaston: Common? How do  you mean common? "Ordinary" common or "coarse" common?
Gigi: Ordinary ... and coarse

Gaston: Uncle! I'll tell you Europe is breeding a generation of vandals and ingrates. Children are coming into the world with ice-covered souls and hatchets in their hands! And before they have finished, they'll smash everything beautiful and decent.
Honore Lachaille: Have a piece of cheese

They don't make them like they used to

Geraint automatically sympathised with anyone who was not shouting

Geraint automatically sympathised with anyone who was not shouting. He admired Basil's self-restraint. He loved the sheen on his waistcoat and the sparkle of his studs. There was a mystery in correct dress. There was a mystery in money. He was sick of homespun and home-made. He had secreted a glass of champagne behind the black lacquer puppet-boxes, and thought it was delicious and complex, cold bubbles bursting on his tongue, the mist on the glass, the transparent gold liquid. Some people had this every day. Some people did not sleep under a leaky roof in an old mansion with a cold wind blowing through it, for the sake of mounds of clay and visions of glazed vessels. Money was freedom. Money was aesthetic. Money was Arab stallions, not rough cobs. Money was not being shouted at. (Even though Humphry was shouting at Basil.) Money was freedom. Money was life. Something like that, Geraint thought.

A.S. Byatt, The Children's book (2010), 59