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