Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.

The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.

A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.

Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.