Quotations

“In this world, you can search for everything, except Love and Death.
They find you when the time comes.”
Sergei Yesenin, who committed suicide at the age of 30 (though it has been suggested that the OGPU murdered him)

“We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us.” Marcel Proust, “Seascape, with a Frieze of Girls"

“All the brains in the world are powerless against the sort of stupidity that is in fashion.” Jean de La Fontaine

“Civilisation – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organisation of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance." Evelyn Waugh

"In 1997 the British economy was bigger than that of China and India combined. Today, China’s economy alone is six times larger." Tom McTague

"Of course there are other multinational states [in addition to the USSR] where the core nationality exercises power through a civic rather than an ethnic identification. The English dominate their state as Britons even though they unconsciously conflate Britain with England, much to the irritation of the Scots, Welsh and Irish."
John Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism (1994)