“... of its larger plot, which is what Ford Madox Ford arranged. Ford was a Catholic of sorts, but it may be that it takes writers of more profound or more extreme religious conviction to express the relation of the human and the supernatural plots. Such writers were the subject, some thirty years ago, of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s Maria Cross, and anybody who ...”

“... are the House of France. Summon the Minister of the Interior of Gotha at once so that I personally may order these changes. The next year, the Almanach serenely carried two versions, one entitled ‘Edition for France – at his Imperial Majesty’s Request’ and the second ‘The Gotha – Correct in All Detail’. This stratagem was more than a temporary ...”

“... goal had been achieved by, dare we say, a Leap of Faith. The clips of Beckham’s sending-off may well have staying power. I doubt it, though. Already the forces of forgiveness are rallying on his behalf, as so they should be. In four years’ time, it will surely be thought of as bad form to highlight the lad’s callow petulance. Bad karma, too: in four ...”

“... translated ‘On the Nature of Things’ or (as it is here) ‘On the Nature of the Universe’, may well be thought the best philosophy in classical Latin, superior to Cicero or Seneca in intellectual seriousness and sustained power of argument. Yet Cicero, who greatly admired him as a poet, never mentions him as a philosopher, and Seneca is equally ...”

“... as a model for development. It is as if she believes that, whereas our own pursuit of growth may have had unfortunate environmental consequences, it has broadly achieved what was expected of it, and whatever social problems Western societies may have come from other causes. It is difficult to see what supports this ...”

“... penis) Cixous understands the myth as a story about both male fears and the dangerous results they may have for women. Medusa’s decapitation is seen as an effect, not a symbol of castration anxiety. As a post-Lacanian, Cixous maintains an arch ambivalence about the epistemological status of all psychoanalytical theory – hers included. Her real interest ...”

“... up the soil and depositing their dung – kept a rich sward in good condition. The climate may have been drier than at present, if the fossil pollen of the grasses is to be believed, and because so much water was locked up in the ice caps, sea levels were lower. Thus the land bridge of Beringia joined Siberia to Alaska and large mammals could wander ...”

“... course on for ever unexpressed. Arnold allows for the possibility, however rare, that in love we may gain access to our buried life: ‘And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.’ But Eliot, according to Raine, resorts to F.H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality to be told that ‘every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.’ Bradley ...”

“... been rising out of my past to express surprise that I ever should have amounted to anything. You may not believe it but I am going to have to thank one fellow for remembering the days of ’81 when we went to kindergarten together and once cut up a snake into very small pieces to see if contrary to the known laws of nature we couldn’t make it stop ...”

“... It’s apparently the style and not the opinions that he would have wished to disavow, though he may also have wanted to forget the poverty-driven hack work of his early years. What we know of his views on racial or imperial matters is not consistent with such a show of racial animus. Even his unillusioned anti-Rousseauist notions about savages or the savage ...”

“... Why do we enjoy tragedy? It may be thought that our best hope of answering this question lies in the psychology of Freud, who disclosed the dark side of the psyche. Behind this darkening of the mind, however, there lies another darkening, of our picture of the ancient sources of European literature. Antiquity, formerly given over to the Ego, becomes the province of the Id ...”

“... years before the great innovator created it for the writing of history – and he overdoes it, as may happen to a parodist in any age. Style or anachronism, either criterion by itself may be enough to condemn a product once it has come under suspicion for other reasons, such as dubious provenance or a motive all too ...”

“... the science of government, which human understanding seems, hitherto, unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at ...”

“... what he calls ‘this conservative tendency’ as ‘a species of need’:The form it takes may be some version of a repetition compulsion, a need to grind out some rendering of an old and usually self-defeating pattern … But mixed in with the apparent need to repeat, another (and opposing) motivational system, or need, is operating as well, one that ...”

“... words appear in the same order in both poems – was some kind of April Fool. Zadie Smith, who may or may not still count as a new writer (maybe she enjoys the increasingly common distinction of being both new and established simultaneously), hasn’t contributed to New Writing 10; but then she’s been busy editing an ...”