“... ideas as Wittgenstein’s of language games and Austin’s of how to do things with words. But, it may be felt, Phillips’s use, for example, of the idea of words ‘doing something’, as in ‘Symptoms’, the second essay in Terrors and Experts, is not Austin’s, as when we find there: ‘It is always worth wondering, as a prelude to a case-presentation ...”

“... contradictory attitudes derive from a common source and are interdependent, whereas mixed feelings may be based on a realistic assessment of the imperfect nature of the object.’ Love and hate – a too simple vocabulary, and so never quite the right names – are the common source, the elemental feelings with which we apprehend the world; they are ...”

“... When you have bid your servant once adieu. Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, nor your affairs suppose, But like a sad slave sit and think of naught Save where you are how happy you make those. So true a fool is love, that in your will, Though you do anything, he thinks no ill. Shakespeare wrote at moments more richly and deeply ...”

“... Brutus’ name from his speech entirely’, Cicero says, before going on to hint that the omission may have had something to do with the fact that Brutus’ mother, Servilia, was sleeping with Caesar. Their relationship led to the rumour (which can’t be true) that Brutus was Caesar’s illegitimate son. Caesar​ began his campaigns in Gaul the following ...”

“... Reading The Cypress Box made her ‘oblivious to the world’. She found her voice, as Larkin may have found his through reading Hardy and knowing Kingsley Amis, and when Gumilev returned he was deeply impressed by what she had written. She had become a better poet than he, and though their marriage was ill-assorted and unhappy, and was to end in divorce ...”

“... way of knowing whether individual torturers seek an ‘uncontestable’ power in their work. Some may, others are conscripted peasant youths who receive pay and privileges for work in support of a regime they trust. Many people, though not all, will torture in response to the orders of authorities they habitually accept and even revere, as Stanley Milgram’s ...”

“... on the artist. Why this should be is a teasing question. I am inclined to think that the answer may be banal, not to say dull. We learn most, perhaps, from those commentators who unveil concrete links and echoes in the utterances of the past. A formal analysis, however subtle, confirms what we have half-intuited anyway: but a thorough historical study ...”

“... last attempt for the present at Dramatic Poetry to a Great Dramatic Poet: ‘Wishing what I write may be read by his light’: if a phrase originally addressed, by not the least worthy of his contemporaries, to Shakespeare, may be applied here, by one whose sole privilege is in a grateful admiration, to Walter Savage ...”

“... of his old boss. Thatcherism was always an aberration from the norm of advanced capitalism. Major may not know how to get back to the mainstream but I shall be astonished if he does not try. On the left, Bennite siege socialism and even Bevanite Clause Four utopianism have disappeared without trace. Labour is now a social-democratic party, committed to a ...”

“... Take a sample of current and Recent theorists, chosen with an eye to having as little in common as may be: Heidegger, or Wittgenstein, or Chomsky, or Piaget, or Saussure, or Dewey or any cognitive scientist you like, to say nothing of such contemporary philosophers as Davidson, Dennett, Rorty and Quine. You may choose ...”

“... sometimes emotionally urgent style which invites us to get close to what these long dead teachers may have had at heart. Hellenistic philosophy is often called ‘post-Aristotelian’ philosophy, and Nussbaum takes Aristotle (who died a year after Alexander) as the starting-point, setting out his ethical outlook as a kind of bench-mark. She claims for him, as ...”

“... Many celebrations were planned and held, not only in Philadelphia, where the framers had met from May to September in 1787, but in many American cities, large and small. The point of these ceremonial events was not only to recall a moment in the nation’s past but also to educate the public about the meaning and value of the Constitution. None of these ...”

“... direct their helpful behaviour towards relatives, then the genes associated with altruism may spread, because they are present in the beneficiaries and transmitted to their offspring; or if today’s altruist is tomorrow’s recipient, the present loss may be made up with interest. Models of kin selection and ...”

“... eructation to be heard in the by now extensive library of Oulipian production, the items of which may have their makers’ names attached to them but are without exception scrupulously unrevealing of any psychic quiddity. The Oulipo’s few, hospitable rules, moreover, were drawn up so as to make it clear from the start that this literary grouping would be ...”

“... version of its structure, but the user’s manual doesn’t limit the ways in which the book may be read. Nothing said about Ulysses seems to spoil it. But Finnegans Wake lacks this imperturbability: it seems to demand to be read in one way, and nobody knows what the way is. Obstinate rather than patient, it holds out against every effort of good ...”