I wondered how I would have looked at this painting had I been Christian

I wondered how I would have looked at this painting [Duccio's Madonna dei Frncesani] had I been Christian. Perhaps I would have liked it less, or liked it more, or liked it in a way that was beside the point, to do with its religious symbolism, and I would have then thought that was the point, that was why it had sustained my interest, and I might have been moved and delighted in a subtly but profoundly different way

H. Matar, A month in Siena (2019), 80

Our measuring jugs are inadequate, too small and too vague.

Our measuring jugs are inadequate, too small and too vague. A half pint seems useless to me, and measures marked on the outside, like the popular and cheap Pyrex glass jugs, don't give accurate reading for small quantities, Enamel jugs get chipped. Plastic jugs are hideous, they don't last, and they are not accurate. That leaved stainless steel. These are expensive, they are reasonably well marked, and they are durable. The only commonly available one in this country is also ungainly, the handle uncomfortable to hold.

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977), 242

Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap.

Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap. So for that matter was sea transport. In the 1920s, when the railways had largely superseded the canals as a means of internal freight haulage, it was cheaper for American farmers to send wheat 700 miles from St Louis to the port of New Orleans and thence across the Atlantic to Britain than it was for an English farmer to send his wheat by rail freight across three counties from Somerset to London, a distance of about 200 miles.

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977), 16

'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' demands the Prophet Isaiah

Writing about a subject so ancient and so universal as the baking of bread  it is hard for a modern author to find fresh words to express his views and observations. Over and over again I have found that something I had been struggling for days to put on paper has been said long before, and in rather more graphic words than I could achieve. 'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' demands the Prophet Isaiah. I doubt if I could ever convey my feelings about shop bread quite so devastatingly.

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977), xvii

Our history, right up to the present, is filled with mass murder, but whenever we speak of killing, it is with eyes lowered and tones of pious horror

"Well, of course we are westerners," he says in another voice,sounding suddenly professional. "Westerners, or at least immigrants who settled here. For us killing is a question of law and morality, or medicine, at any rate a sanctioned or prohibited act that is very precisely delineated within our system of thought. We kill, but in a more complicated way; we kill according to the dictates and authorization of the law... Our history, right up to the present, is filled with mass murder, but whenever we speak of killing, it is with eyes lowered and  tones of pious horror; we cannot do otherwise, it is our prescribed role.

S. Marai, Embers (1942), tr. C.B. Janeworthy (2001), 198

Obedience had to be rooted in the heart: that was what really counted. People had to be certain that everything was in its place

Fifty million people found their security in the feeling that their Emperor [Franz Josef] was in bed before midnight and up again before five, sitting by candlelight at his desk in an American rush-bottomed chair, while everyone else who had pledged their loyalty to him was obeying the customs and the laws. Obedience had to be rooted in the heart: that was what really counted. People had to be certain that everything was in its place.

...

Vienna and the monarchy made up one enormous family of Hungarians, Germans, Moravians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, and Italians, all of whom secretly understood that the only person who could keep order among this fantastical welter of longings, impulses  and emotions was the Emperor, in his capacity of Sergeant Major and Imperial Majesty, government clerk in sleeve protectors and Grand Seigneur, unmannerly clod and absolute ruler.

S. Marai, Embers (1942), tr. C.B. Janeworthy (2001), 66-8

The London effect could be explained away when the diverse composition of pupils was taken into account

But as with so many quests, the rush to find answers had lost sight of the real story. Economist Simon Burgess delivered a humbling message: the London effect could be explained away when the diverse composition of pupils was taken into account. Burgess argued the headlong rush to find the magic bullets behind the London effect was overlooking the real achievement: the dynamism of London's increasingly diverse population, composed if children whose parents had come from all over the world. ... [and] London is now the stand-out capital of graduate coupling. By 2016, a thrd of London families had two parents with degrees. 

L.E. Major and S. Machin, Social mobility and its enemies (2018), 165-6

Independently educated pupils gaining an extra 0.64 of a grade for each of their GCSE examinations

Private school pupils are on average two years ahead academically of their counterparts in state schools by the age f 176, even taking into account the social background and prior attainment of children. This equates to independently educated pupils gaining an extra 0.64 of a grade for each of their GCSE examinations at age 16.

L.E. Major and S. Machin, Social mobility and its enemies (2018), 141

The unfortunate tendency to revert to the idea of the 'Establishment' as a central feature of British society and government

In the early twenty-first century, the old aristocratic, landed, upper class is a thing of the past. We need to insist on this, given the unfortunate tendency to revert to the idea of the 'Establishment' as a central feature of British society and governance.

M. Savage, Social Class in the 21st Century (2015), 307

An independent education is particularly effective in social reproduction

However, an independent education is particularly effective in social reproduction, because those with senior managerial or traditional professional parents, but with no degree, are as likely to enter the elite, at least among our respondents, as working class, comprehensive-educated, Oxford graduates.

M. Savage, Social Class in the 21st Century (2015), 247

The final self-effacing gesture of one whose lifetime's single aim, as Princess and as Queen, had been to serve the British Throne.

The New Year, 1953, was that of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Mary who drove out in Hyde Park in February to look at the stands being erected along the processional route, let it be known at Buckingham Palace that, should she no longer be there to attend the Coronation, this solemnity must on no account of mourning be postponed. This, we may think, was the final self-effacing gesture of one whose lifetime's single aim, as Princess and as Queen, had been to serve the British Throne.

J . Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959), 620-1

Aunt Augusta's persistent view of France as a regicide nation

'I rather dread the next days as you can imagine,' she wrote to her aunt just before starting for France, 'it will all be rather difficult and unusual.' Although she did not, of course, share her Aunt Augusta's* persistent view of France as a regicide nation, Queen Mary was very much aware that this was her first state visit as Queen of England to a foreign republic. Some of her mother's greatest friends had been the Princes and Princesses of the exiled house of Orleans, and Queen Mary herself has always known and liked the Empress Eugenie.   

J . Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959), 483

* Princess Augusta, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 1822-1916