When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.

To be great is to assume great concerns.

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

Consistency is a virtue for trains.

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?