“... the Eaglescliffe Hall now is, God alone knows. I couldn’t trace it in Lloyd’s Register, but it may have been renamed. At best, ships live half as long as humans, and it would now be 38 years old. I was at its launch in October 1956: the photo shows me in school cap and muffler, with Great-Uncle Alex and Great-Aunt Jean, Cousin Jean, two small Canadian ...”

“... embrace the idea perhaps most difficult for defenders of traditional history to accept: that there may be more than one legitimate account of past events, a ‘multiplicity of accurate histories’. Despite these concessions, however, and like the traditionalists they frequently criticise, they ultimately rally to defend the intellectual integrity of the study ...”

“... for it is the greatest preserver and promoter of industry, trade, arms and study.’ However that may be, strict settlements did not come under the common law courts but the court of Chancery, which did not encourage alienation. Nevertheless, Chancery promulgated and enforced ‘the rule against perpetuities’, which laid down that no estate could be tied up ...”

“... women’s ‘hero worship’. In doing so, and like his subject, at least in her later work, he may not tell us much about psychoanalysis. But he tells us a great deal about both Horney and ourselves – men as well as ...”

“... as an example of his wit) that three mistakes in his life is not bad going. My fellow smoker, who may be reaching some kind of limit, asks if he supports these children. ‘He sends them a bag of mealie meal from time to time,’ chortles the Evil One. I loathe this woman so much (Yea, yea, moral philosophy and freedom of speech) I decide to kill her. A plan ...”

“... Lee Jones is good as usual (I can’t imagine him as Al Gore’s roommate in college, try as I may, but so he was) and Jessica Lange gives the performance of her lifetime. When people could get to this picture, they loved it and rewarded it. So there is an unslaked demand for quality ‘out there’. Hoop Dreams, the documentary which created a huge fuss ...”

“... hearts would be broken, but then they are broken anyway. It is hard not to sympathise with what may seem at first an outré suggestion; there is certainly something odd and stultifying in a culture that insists that abundant and fecund women are children until, at some arbitrary date, they have finished their education. No doubt this artificially prolonged ...”

“... first part). And his medical training, the importance of which he emphasises in the Reflections, may explain why he writes so well about the body, gestures and facial expressions. It is a pity he never wrote about Lavater and physiognomy. These virtues are combined with high theoretical ambition. Like many writers of the Frankfurt School, Elias played Marx ...”

“... Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Academic Questions. Lefkowitz admits that she may have biases but argues that this is very different from ‘consciously setting out to achieve a particular political goal’. Ten years ago, she would have been able to avoid any charge of bias, because she, and those who think like her, held hegemonic power ...”

“... is not the Communist candidate, but the nominee of the National Patriotic Bloc of parties. That may be true; but the Communist Party, after its breakthrough victories in the Duma elections in December, was hugely more influential than any of the others. The second most powerful party was Working Russia, led by Victor Anpilov, another ranting anti-semitic ...”

“... had praised the modern press as an instrument of democratic enfranchisement: ‘Vulgar though it may be, the press accomplishes a useful task; it is the avant-garde of democracy, it makes reading commonplace and enlarges our public. I know that this enlarged public is precisely what vexes retired literati and young aesthetes. But why should we tremble before ...”

“... but sympathetic view of the Gypsies, almost forces herself to believe that these conferences may mark a turning-point. She observes that, like others before them, this new élite has been rejected by many Gypsies, who consider them to have crossed over into the gadjo world. In many respects they have indeed crossed over, and become ‘career ...”

“... I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses’) to cheer myself up. There may have been a touch of the Ahabs in Denis’s genealogy. Thomas Thatcher, grandfather of the present baronet, was a bit of an adventurer, sailing to New Zealand in the 1870s to seek his fortune rather than following his father and grandfather into farming near ...”

“... have a narrative content, the fantastic pictures almost seem to have been painted in the way we may have to recount the night’s bad dreams over breakfast before we can get on with the day. His antidote to the diable au corps, his path to sublimation, was to dedicate himself to working patiently, sanely, soberly, from nature, a course taken from about 1872 ...”

“... changed character. ‘Please give me your telephone number. My teeth clashed horribly. I may have whiplash.’ The young man stood grinning idiotically. The English couple seated next to her tried to help. I guessed that they had also been to the wedding. When the young man refused to divulge his number, the middle-aged Englishwoman rang the bell for ...”