Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn't it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?

I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But [Margaret Thatcher] carried it to extremes.

Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.

History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.

[Margaret Thatcher] scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper.