It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.

Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.

He was not only a bore; he bored for England.

It's the circumstances of popular monarchy, the manner in which it's developed, and it is also the fault of the people who present her with this unquestioning adulation. In other words, it's their lack of a larger faith. Which makes them fasten onto, a purely earthly symbol.

Politicians get their power too late, and I think that he has inherited an impossible situation in which he is ill-equipped to deal.

In his own lifetime Jesus made no impact on history. This is something that I cannot but regard as a special dispensation on God's part, and, I like to think, yet another example of the ironical humour which informs so many of His purposes. To me, it seems highly appropriate that the most important figure in all history should thus escape the notice of memoirists, diarists, commentators, all the tribe of chroniclers who even then existed

I have to say that I think that Anthony Eden was probably the most disastrous Prime Minister in our history, and I am not forgetting Lord North and a few people like that.