They don't know what comes next. They are trembling, assembled together for comfort, confused, bereft, vulnerable, exposed to hostile forces, on the edge of unbeing. They've nothing to bless themselves with and their manifesto looks dumb without a party leader. Where are they to go from here? It was safe in his company, despite the witchhunt. The ...

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    A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. Sounds like a closet Roman Catholic to me. Are we sure about his dates? Or is it a case of posthumous inculturation? I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind ...

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          That day, she fretted long about the lot of women. It could not be denied that the ancient droît de seigneur of feudal times still operated beneath a veneer of good manners. A man need not spare a moment’s hesitation for his arrogance in assuming that any woman he chose was there for the taking. Barriers could be trampled down at will without a grain of ...

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          Twenty observations on 'the smoke made with the fume of sighs." Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage. Ambrose Bierce Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect... E M Forster Whoso loves, ...

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      Passage from Chapter Seven of The Wolf and The Lamb     In the summer of 1786, the Prince of Wales shut up Carlton House, dismissed most of his staff, and went trotting down to Brighton in a hired carriage with his new bride. He wished to emphasise his niggardly income to the King who had repulsed his appeals for help and demanded an exhaustive ...

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     There are no endings, he said, Only new beginnings. You can leave your past in the confessional and start from scratch, a Renaissance every week, admittance to High Table, though you may deserve to be below the salt. Or wandering in the dark outside, aimless, footsore and lost. You can sup with the best of them. It's easy, he said, once you sign up to ...

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