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“... you – or your browser, at least – to the website. (Cookies do have expiration dates, but they may be years in the future.) Then there are ‘pixels’. The type of pixel used as a tool to gather data is a tiny, transparent image, which you can’t see on your screen. When I first realised that, without knowing it, I must have downloaded pixels of this ...”

“... and differences which are not differences but stereotypes is not operationally feasible. Dr May does not attempt it. He is probably right. As a clinical psychologist, he is concerned with feelings and attitudes, and a feeling or attitude which was not overdetermined by any or all of the possible sources of difference would exist on paper, like an ideal ...”

“... work in November, an unenviable duty at the best of times and now we are in the worst of times; may they enjoy good luck, for there will be little else to enjoy. But if ever they have time to lift their eyes from the horror now imposed by Serb and Croat killers of Bosnian civility, they will be moved by this majestic landscape with its long slow spines ...”

“... of imprisonment for attempted suicide: ‘Let this be a lesson to you and to any others who may be thinking of killing themselves.’ In fact, by the mid 19th century the law had got itself into such a tangle that a person injured in a failed attempt at suicide could be indicted for wounding with intent to kill, an offence for which Parliament had ...”

“... of Crimea and pro-Russian rebellions in the east and south of the country, Ukraine seemed by mid-May to be poised on the brink of a far deeper disaster. With fulsome backing from the West, soldiers loyal to the interim government in Kiev were engaged in what it called an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ against pro-Russian militias in Donetsk and Lugansk ...”

“... Chesterton knew that it was only by loving and serving God through his Church that perfect freedom may be found, so it was inevitable that in the cause of Liberty he also became a defender of the Faith ... The understanding of this seeming paradox must be the chief concern of any biography of Chesterton, for the expounding of it was the chief concern of his ...”

“... is said that some animals have a better claim to be cared for than a severely retarded child? It may be argued that it is not of practical importance that these ‘practical’ philosophers say these things, so long as other people keep a modicum of good sense. But it is rash to count on that through all political and social upheavals, and the many ...”

“... six kilometres in diameter and split the northern part of the island into three. This eruption may well have fatally weakened Minoan civilisation, thereby diverting the course of European history. The idea for Plato’s vanished island of Atlantis could have derived from this destruction, an idea that seems to be more indestructible than pumice, for even ...”

“... somehow incorporated in the brain. The particular connections that are made there by experience may remain dormant for a lifetime, and then suddenly give rise to a memory of an event that occurred, say, 80 years earlier. The record must be printed in the tissue. Would it even be possible to recover it after death? This rather frightening thought at least ...”

“... women who were accomplished scientists or artists or explorers. In the monotheistic traditions we may also still need straightforward reminders that divinities need not be male. Goddesses and heroines may not be career models, yet a retelling of myths which emphasises heroic women and female deities casts a surprising new ...”

“... to American women I used to wonder why they didn’t go on strike: ‘No equality, no kids!’ It may be that something like that is happening in those countries where family structure and masculine attitudes are in radical conflict with women’s desire for emancipation. Catholic Italy and Spain, of all places, have the lowest fertility rates in the world ...”

“... and particularly when she is talking about pornography she gives a rhetorical display which may well have been breathtaking in the lecture hall. But the book does in fact offer a legal argument, one which is interesting, and also deeply American, in the sense that MacKinnon discusses the problems raised by pornography and also by speech that constitutes ...”

“... rarely in accord, but they do at least agree on this: that the poor are always with us. Chastity may have gone the way of all flesh, and obedience may have been banished from the marriage service, but poverty – grinding, inexorable, ineradicable – remains: not a state voluntarily embraced on the road to salvation, but ...”

“... vague about how we are going to reach our promised destination; and after a while, we may begin to wonder whether he knows the way himself. It is hard to see, for example, how the kinds of hard chronological evidence that appeal to an event-oriented historian will ever get a useful purchase on the nature of truth in general. Fernández-Armesto ...”

“... wildly unexpected consequences. With hindsight, it’s obvious which is which. Now and then we may devote a sententious moment to thanking our good judgment or good fortune that we decided to do the right thing – right because it worked out so happily. But we surely spend far more time in rueful contemplation of opportunities missed, or agonised remorse ...”