“... the means that I use for this. My business is a holy one, and holy things, so an old sage teaches, may be shown only to holy people. But I regard as holy a weak human being who strives for a lofty goal. His research into Menschenkenntnis, or the ‘understanding of human nature’, built directly on Herder’s search for the nature of humanity, on ...”

“... turns them loose when he comes up from his winter quarters in the plain of Thessaly at the end of May and they run wild in the forest, until it is time to return in October. By then they have scattered over a wide area, impelled at least partly by fear – this year especially, for there is a bear with a taste for meat operating in the Helimòdhi area. The ...”

“... they snivel, how they demand our attention and sympathy. Still riding on a wave of sentiment that may not have had much more energy left in it, the Princess of Wales timed her exit impeccably. It is tempting to think that Richard Branson also understood, if only unconsciously, that public adulation is likely to tire and turn into its own ...”

“... was present at the liberation of a concentration camp (she can’t recall which one) and that in May 1945 he was admitted to a hospital outside Nuremberg for battle fatigue. (He refused to accept a psychiatric discharge.) We also learn of a bizarre, shortlived marriage to ‘Sylvia’, one of the low-ranking Nazi officials whom he arrested while in ...”

“... have never attended on their rucksacks. His slightly lofty disappointment sighs from the pages. He may overstate Chile’s transformation by Pinochet, as he may exaggerate the country’s earlier appetite for Allende. This is after all a memoir and polemic, not much more than perceptive diary entries really, linked by short ...”

“... Bolster, ‘a passion which would transform her life and stir the deepest part of her being’. In May 1835, they ran away to Switzerland. After five weeks of ‘elevation’ in the Alps, they descended to Geneva, where she felt ‘like a carp on a lawn’. Her new career had begun. Ostracised by the society that idolised her lover, she wrote pugnacious ...”

“... We eat more fast food than any other European country, and we are fatter than any other. That may be a coincidence. It seems unlikely, although British food didn’t exactly sparkle before McDonald’s came along. It would be wrong to portray Schlosser’s book as just another anti-McDonald’s diatribe. It is deeper and broader than that. McDonald’s ...”

“... but he was aware of the potential of civic government. He recognised that the Victorian burgher may have seen himself as the arch-opponent of collectivism – ‘“Socialism, Sir?” he’d say: “Don’t waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, Sir, individual self-help, that’s what made our city what it ...”

“... on to share them with others, which meant that multiple copies were slopping around Washington: in May 1941 the Nazis warned Tokyo that their codes were being broken. Had Tokyo not insisted – absurdly – that its codes were unbreakable, this would have cost the Allies dear. Henry Wallace, the Vice-President, was an even greater liability, happily confiding ...”

“... household. The genetic ancestor of the warm and reassuring place into which Calliope/ Cal is born may be Greek, but its fictional ancestors, more conventionally stagey, are movie-derived: Jewish families from the Bronx. The backchat never stops, and Milton is its finest proponent. He’s a lovable contrarian: he is known for complaining about the price of ...”

“... and wrote that ‘the sensory consciousness of a person, though apparently located in the brain, may also be conceived of as also existing like a faint echo in space, or in other brains.’ Such finely calibrated sensors between sensitive souls, such tremulous, responsive, imponderably harmonised bodies, appear in the writings of Henry James, Virginia Woolf ...”

“... for more than two thousand years, are to return to their homeland. Few hereabouts believe it, but may wish it. Do let your friend know what you hear about this matter, and what you think. For my part, I cannot put any faith in this news as long as it is not reported by trustworthy men from the city of Constantinople, which is most of all concerned in this ...”

“... her companions? For starters, it involves a Walter Cronkite surrogate. The time is ‘Sunday, 25 May 1539’. The place is Tampa Bay on the Gulf of Florida. In my mind, I can hear the narrator: ‘What kind of a day was it? A day like all days . . .’ ‘We barely see,’ Richter writes, ‘the sails of nine Spanish ships anchored three miles or so off the ...”

“... pay no taxes or royalties and use sweated labour, they can face down legitimate competitors, who may be forced to enter into partnerships with them. True, this is not unprecedented, but the forms are new, and there are more places of refuge and more corrupt officials and bent businessmen to make it all work. Third, while part of this illicit trade takes the ...”

“... self-loathing. Yet even here there is a strange play between the Promethean and the Orphic. There may be a physicist’s response to the wonder (or dread) of existence, and I do not mean the much touted idea of a Big Bang when everything came into being. The closest to nothingness that can be imagined is a vacuum at zero degrees Kelvin. In classical ...”