IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.

It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.

In general, Hitler embodied the view of any popular newspaper.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

The really clever people now want to be lawyers or journalists.

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.