A. N. Wilson
If only Queen Elizabeth II had the intellectual, political and linguistic skills of Queen Elizabeth I, many people would support giving her some of the powers of an elected president.
I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.
People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.
Personally, I think universities are finished. So much rubbish gets taught.
Anti-Semitism is extremely common.
It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.
On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.
It is the woman - nearly always - in spite of all the advances of modern feminism, who still takes responsibility for the bulk of the chores, as well as doing her paid job. This is true even in households where men try to be unselfish and to do their share.
If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.Collection: Acceptance
Hitler suffered acutely from meteorism; perhaps he did not suffer so acutely as those around him, since meteorism is uncontrolled farting, a condition exacerbated by Hitler's strictly vegetarian diet.Collection: Vegetarian Diet
Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.Collection: Christian
One symptom of his (Hitler) being strangely at variance with reality, or the nature of things,was his gift for wearing inappropriate of ludicrous clothing...When he was supposed to be starting a militaristic revolution he was wearing evening dress and an ill-fitting black tailcoat...and his army medals.Collection: Army
In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity - or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity - by being opinionated rather than by being learned.Collection: Education
This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of.Collection: War
We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect.Collection: Formal
It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.Collection: Thinking
In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same.Collection: Class
As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated.Collection: What Matters
In general, Hitler embodied the view of any popular newspaper.Collection: Views
History does not eliminate grievances. It lays them down like landmines.Collection: History
We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.Collection: God
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year.Collection: Book
I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.Collection: Book
I was once naïve enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked the town of Eastbourne. He replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it.Collection: Self
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us.Collection: History