Fidelity, in my youth, was largely a question of bad roads and poor bus services

Fidelity, in my youth, was largely a question of bad roads and poor bus services - the crack-up began when we began to move about. Now mobility and overcrowding offer so many alternative choices and proliferation of loves that faithfulness to one person almost suggests dim-wittedness.

L.Lee, 'Notes on marriage' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 122

One finds almost every type of our landed gentry

In Robert of Berkeley's long line of heirs and collaterals, one finds almost every type of our landed gentry - from the dull unremembered, the studious and devout, the plain country farmer and fiery squire, to the schemer, eccentric, cultured patron of the arts, military hero, rakehell and bounder. Many were fortunate enough to live lives of sylvan quiet. Others found their castle placed in the canon's mouth.

L.Lee, 'Lords of Berkeley Castle' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 107

The silent killer of history’s obligation to truth and objectivity

British historians have viewed computing technology variously as the handmaiden of postmodernism, as a witless accomplice in the collapse of narrative, and as the silent killer of history’s obligation to truth and objectivity

W. G. Thomas III, ‘Computing and the Historical Imagination’, ed. S. Schreibman, R. G. Siemens, and J. Unsworth, A Companion to Digital Humanities (2004), 61

Not in my hands it isn't

There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war

It was the fag end of the war, a quiet conspiratorial time with no secret lives; we were all in it, and by now we knew most things about each other – we shared and stuffed ourselves on them. There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war, that freewheeling fantasizing that goes with displaced persons who are displaced through no fault of their own. The girls fell on the few men with an urgent and hungry disdain. They tidied the rooms of the bachelors and cooked for them. They took our shirts home at weekends and washed them.

L. Lee, 'Chelsea towards the end of the last war' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 88

He'll be much godlier after he's dead

Am I supposed to feel so much awe and so on about the Godking? After all he's just a man, even if he does live in Awabath in a palace ten miles around with gold roofs. He's about fifty years old, and he's bald. You can see in all the statues. And I'll bet you he has to cut his toenails, just like any other man. I know perfectly well that he's a god, too. But what I think is, he'll be much godlier after he's dead.

U.K. Le Guin, The tombs of Atuan (1972), in eadem, Earthsea: the first four books (2016), 209

For on that shadowed catafalque rests the print of a spirit who when alive seemed to be all things living

For on that shadowed catafalque rests the print of a spirit who when alive seemed to be all things living - who was lover, soldier, artist, wit, master of language and prince of the will, who took fate by the heels and the scruff of the neck and shook it roughly into shape and order, defying its betrayals, indifference and threats, commanding its obedience by obstinacy and bluff, outstaring its masks of disaster till it yielded to victory ad danced to the tune he wanted.

L.Lee, 'The lying in state' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 20