The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

I exercise self-control and never touch any beverage stronger than gin before breakfast.

The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - making it possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.

Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.

All babies look like Winston Churchill.

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

For my life, I confess to you, feels to me today somewhat narrow and circumscribed.

To some people, knowledge and science are everything. To me, God is everything I don't know.

It was always fun to skate with Paul Wylie and Paul Martini.

Those of you that will be 21 by November the 12th, I ask for your support and your vote.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.