Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.

I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.

The latest research has revealed that women have a higher IQ than men.

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.

I might be deceiving myself but I do not think that I do have an inordinate fear of death.

Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.