Life would be simpler if morally objectionable things like corruption also had unambiguously negative economic consequences

Life would be simpler if morally objectionable things like corruption also had unambiguously negative economic consequences. But the reality is a lot messier. Looking at just the last half a century, there are certainly countries, like Zaire under Mobutu or Haiti under Duvalier, whose economy was ruined by rampant corruption. At the other extreme, we have countries like Finland, Sweden and Singapore, which are known for their cleanliness and have also done very well economically. Then we have countries like Indonesia that were very corrupt but performed well economically. Some other countries - Italy, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China come to mind—have done even better than Indonesia during this period, despite ingrained corruption on a widespread and often massive scale (though not as serious as in Indonesia). 

H. Chang, Bad Samaritans (2007), 162

I see it matters to you what his motives are but it is of no importance for me

'You and I are very different in the way we look at things,  Ashton said, 'and it has taken the advent of Kemp to make this difference clearer - I think to both of us. I see it matters to you what his motives are but it is of no importance for me. Motives are a labyrinth we need not enter. All that matters is the use that can be made of his words....'

B. Unsworth, The quality of mercy (2011), 265

People have been dreaming about reviving American cricket ever since it died during the Civil War

People have been dreaming about reviving American cricket ever since it died during the Civil War, 160 years ago. It was killed by a shortage of pitches, kit and coaching, and by the rise of baseball, the great American pastime. Baseball had two advantages. It was easier to play - all you needed was a bat, a ball, four bases and a field - and if you were good at it, you could make a lot more money. Plenty of professional crickets made the switch.

A. Bull, 'Cricket in the USA: the American dream', in L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2025), 122

From the age of 30, he took 436 Test wickets at 24

Even accounting for that series [2023Ashes], Anderson had grown old with astonishing grace  From the age of 30, he took 436 Test wickets at 24 - a total surpassed by only nine others in their entire career. From 35, he took 224 at 22, the bowling equivalent of Jack Hobbs's 100 first class hundreds after the age of 40. And since turning 40 himself, Anderson took 47 at 27.

L. Booth, 'Notes from the Editor', L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2025), 18

He was born to be Emperor of Cochin-China, to smoke 36-fathom pipes, to have 6,000 wives and 1,400 catamites

At eighteen, he [Flaubert] decides that some freakish wind must have mistakenly transported him to France: he was born, he declares, to be Emperor of Cochin-China, to smoke 36-fathom pipes, to have 6,000 wives and 1,400 catamites; but instead, displaced by this meteorological hazard, he is left with immense, insatiable desires, fierce boredom, and an attack of the yawns.

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 142

There shall be a twenty-year ban on novels set in Oxford and Cambridge

4) There shall be a twenty-year ban on novels set in Oxford and Cambridge, and a ten year ban on other university fiction. No ban on fiction set in polytechnics (though no subsidy to encourage it). No ban on novels set in primary schools; a ten-year ban on secondary-school fiction. A partial ban on growing-up novels (one per author allowed). A partial ban on novels written in the historic present (again, one per author). A total ban on on novels where the main character is a journalist or a television presenter.

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 111-2

Actually, the whole list of proposed literary bans is great. In full, the narrator bans novels 

1. Where people revert to the 'natural condition' of man
2. About incest
3. Set in abbatoirs
4. Set in Oxford and Cambridge (as above)
5. Set in South America (quota system)
6. With scenes of bestiality
7. About small forgotten wars in distant parts of the British Empire
8. Where any major character is identified by a single letter
9. About other novels
10. With 'allegorical, metaphorical, allusive, offstage, imprecise and ambiguous uses of God' 

I didn't relish this: not least because it meant that I didn't break my silence till the cheese course

I don't even care for harmless, comic coincidences. I once went out to dinner and discovered that the seven other people present had all just finished reading A Dance to the Music of Time. I didn't relish this: not least because it meant that I didn't break my silence till the cheese course.

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 70-71

Mary still suggested popery to most English people.

Mary still suggested popery to most English people. Indeed, one explanation for the failure to develop a stronger Marian devotional tradition in Anglicanism may be that those who had the strongest feelings about Mary became Catholic, 

G. Woodman, 'The Blessed Virgin Mary in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Theology: a Study in Doctrine and Devotion' Sobornost 46.1 (2024), 20

If he got the chance he used to go to London for the day when he knew people were coming

When she [her mother] and Dada went away, I was left alone with Grandpapa [Lord Northwood]. He was very old, and queer and silent. He hated people, and never spoke to the people who came to the house [Knole]; in fact, if he got the chance he used to go to London for the day when he knew people were coming, and I used to be left alone to entertain them. It amused me later on, when sometimes I was had downstairs to make fourteen, to see him sitting quite mute between two wretched women who were trying to make conversation to him, or else crushing them into silence: 'You have lovely gardens here, Lord Northwood.' 'What do you know about gardens?', he would snap at them.

N. Nicolson and V. Sackville-West, Portrait of a marriage (1973), 11-12