“... traditional theology, virtue is a matter of energy and enjoyment, and evil mere deprivation. Evil may make a lot of noise, but the dust and heat it raises derive from an incapacity for life, which is why nobody could actually be in hell. To be damned must mean to be dead. All this, however, is bound to look different when the middle classes are in the ...”

“... questions were asked, and the same points raised (e.g. Arafat’s promise to declare a state on 4 May 1999 when a state was already declared in 1998). The fraudulent National Council is to be summoned again to do Arafat’s bidding ‘democratically’. And still the Israeli settlers are on the move; more villages are threatened, more roads are built, more ...”

“... fact only the title-story of the eight that make up All around Atlantis has an ‘I’, and this may signal a further shift in Eisenberg’s self-denying aesthetic, her predilection for the other view that leaves more room for the voice of the text. In her two earlier collections, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, 12 years ago and Under the 82nd Airborne ...”

“... between science and ‘the humanities’. Wilson himself appears vaguely aware that there may be trouble here, and he’s not very clear about what the programme comes to. ‘Neither science nor the arts can be complete without combining their separate strengths. Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the ...”

“... son, and one of the best known Italians of the 20th century: Padre Pio. His beatification on 2 May has been an epic feat of organisation, with most of the country immersed in preparation for the big event (and even the Serie A game between Roma and Inter postponed to the following day). Pope John Paul II is to celebrate a televised mass in St ...”

“... of the Klan as screwball-vigilantes. But then maybe the publishers were desperate. These minutes may be oh-so-secret but for much of the time they read like the weekly log-books of some particularly dim Boy Scout troop. Local trivia meets procedural pomposity. Week in, week out, for two seemingly never-ending years, these small-town ...”

“... media, somewhat understating it, call a ‘transition period’. In a few generations’ time it may well be possible to look back and see the Nineties as a pivotal moment, but virtually an entire decade of ‘transition’ makes a mockery of the word ‘pivot’. ‘Uncertainty’, ‘instability’, ‘disorientation’ don’t go the required distance ...”

“... it. There seems to be a general fear that the Iraqi enthusiasm for the conservation of antiquities may go a touch too far. In Babylon we saw the plinths for statues of Ishtar and Ashtoreth, and our guide grumbled about the ancient puritans who had smashed the graven images. ‘What do you think of that, Mr David?’ said a poet. ‘Destroying all those ...”

“... is the direct involvement of ministers. Between them, the Green Paper and this series of reviews may lead to decisions, within the year ahead, on the future of the Welfare State, or a large part of it. If we do not like what we get, that will be either because we do not share the ideas of the decision-makers of the day or because we do not share their views ...”

“... enjoyment of their rights.’ No one can now judge the real danger of the situation. Informers may have exaggerated, but there was the indisputable episode of the Cato Street Conspiracy, when a group of fanatics, penetrated by Lord Sidmouth’s spies, planned to murder the entire Cabinet. The ministers made a joke of it but at heart they cannot have ...”

“... it must have been something like an anxiety brushing the fringes of the mind. James McBryde may have been, in a sense, Monty’s Arthur Hallam, but was far from having been a prime passion in the grave. Monty, as Mr Cox insists, never looked for intensity in friendship – although he had, as Arthur Benson expresses it, ‘rather a romantic ...”

“... to the funfair Disneyland and, ultimately, the educational park Disneyworld. (George, unlike Walt, may live to see his academy: he’s still under 40.) Like Disney, Lucas has a special relationship with the child and, like Disney again, he has the knack of treating his largely adult audiences as boys and tomboys without offending their dignity. (Although more ...”

“... species, despite the objection that it is akin to sexism, racism, and other heinousness. Or humans may be qualitatively distinct, a belief shared by Christianity and Islam on the basis that we are ‘made in God’s image’. A book which appeared just before the Warnock Report, and which complements and expands on the ‘Warnock topics’, is Human ...”

“... the lash: ‘That would be all very fine if he weren’t making himself a soldier – whatever he may say to the contrary – through his volitions, his perceptions, his emotions ... He thus stubbornly continues to flee what he’s making of himself – which plunges him into a state of wretched, diffuse anguish’ (Sartre’s italics). Sartre is not ...”

“... as he later suggested, conceive the idea of the Land League while he broke bones in Dartmoor. It may not be surprising to find that he probably never read Marx: it is remarkable that he did not read Lalor until 1880. The massively detailed account of his American journey, if sometimes verging on the tedious, elucidates the gradual crystallisation of his ...”