The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing was then a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with those vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in a wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying one of those grim structures as you would have thought of travelling with a piano.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

Man, the creature who knows he must die, who has dreams larger than his destiny, who is forever working a confidence trick on himself, needs an ally. Mine has been tobacco.

In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.

In a matriarchy men should be encouraged to take it easy, for most women prefer live husbands to blocks of shares and seats on the board.