"An archeologist is the best husband any woman can have:
the older she gets, the more he is interested in her." Agatha
Christie
"Pierce, the ninth seed, never was one for trench warfare.
Rather like Nato forces she prefers to do battle from a
safe distance, demoralising her rivals with baseline Exocets.
But she was routed by Dokic's carefully constructed guerilla
campaign." Paul Weaver in The Guardian Weekly, Vol.
161, No. 1, p. 36
"The United States has a Republican candidate bothered
by awkward questions about past drug use, a squeaky-clean
Democratic candidate and an open-minded lame-duck incumbent."
Jorge G. Castaneda in NEWSWEEK, September 6, 1999,
p. 35
"That books, a commodity little changed since Caxton's
day, should have turned out to be the trailblazers of retailing
on the internet is one of the stranger cultural ironies
of our time. If you've bought one thing on the net, the
newest and most prodigiously high-tech communications system
imaginable, then it is almost certain to be a book, the
oldest and simplest." Brian Appleyard in The Sunday Times,
October 10, 1999
"He is of German blood ... I'm sure he is a Nazi sympathizer."
Mohammed Al-Fayed on Britain's Prince Philip
"Its [Belgium's] armed forces would just about be capable
of mounting an honour guard outside a chocolate factory,
and as for its involvement in the councils of Nato, there
is an Afrikaner word to describe that, which might also
work in Flemish - kortgat-syndroem: short-arse syndrome."
Bruce Anderson in The Spectator, 7 August, 1999.
p. 8
"Will someone come down here and turn me on?" Hillary Rodham
Clinton, after her microphone stopped working
"Continental people have sex life; the English have hot-water
bottles" How to be an Alien, by George Mikes, p.
29
"The debate over the [Comprehensive Test Ban] treaty ...
tells us plenty about the rejection of the whole idea of
diplomacy in favor of a new, highly partisan obtuseness
in American policy." Jonathan Alter in Newsweek,
October 18, 1999, p. 4
"We need make no doubt but that the best forms of speech
will, in time, establish themselves by their own superior
excellence; and in all controversies, it is better to wait
the decisions of time, which are slow and sure, than to
take those of synods, which are often hasty and injudicious."
Joseph Priestley, in 1761, speaking against the formation
of an Academy of Language and Belles Lettres for the English
language quoted from: Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue: The
English Language (London, 1991), p. 131 f.
"It's far more logical to put the academically bright together.
You don't get better at tennis by playing people worse than
yourself." The Queen Mother in the book Women of the Century
quoted from: Times Educational Supplement, July 9,
1999, p. 16
"Test results for school-children - if they can be relied
upon - are improving. But too many poor children are still
trapped in failing schools in poor areas. And even New Labour
will not consider restoring the meritocratic system of selective
education, which once provided poor but able children with
a ladder of opportunity." quoted from: The Economist,
September 25th, 1999, p. 16
"If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good
enough for me." An American congressman to the head of the
Joint National Committee on Languages quoted from: Bill
Bryson, Mother Tongue: The English Language (London,
1991, p. 190)
"Now we have France and Germany, having each twice tried
and failed to erect European empires of their own, combining
to found one, which, they hope, they will jointly dominate.
[...] last week's announcement that the French and German
armaments industries are, in effect, to amalgamate may be
the opening of a new and sinister chapter." Paul Johnson,
in The Spectator, 23 October, 1999, p. 23
"It is clear, however, that Blair would much prefer a wholly
appointed chamber. Indeed, he has been dishing out life
peerages to benefactors and chums with the eagerness of
a public-school boy raiding the tuck shop. Among the lords
who came a'licking were his best pal from schooldays Lord
Falconer and Lord Levy, the pop impresario who helped raise
an estimated £7m for Labour, including £2m to fund Blair's
private office." The Sunday Times, November 7, 1999
"Campaigning has always been Bill Clinton's favourite part
of politics, just as his lovers say he prefers seduction
and foreplay to sex." Philip Delves Broughton in The Spectator,
13 November, 1999, p. 25
"Respect for religion must be re-established. Public debt
should be reduced. The arrogance of public officials must
be curtailed. Assistance to foreign lands must be stopped
or we shall bankrupt ourselves. The people should be forced
to work and not depend on government for subsistence." Cicero,
60 B.C.
"An entirely appointed chamber, which could rightly be
characterised as a House of hand-picked hacks, would not
reverse the sad process whereby what was once considered
the Mother of Parliaments is becoming the distant relative
of democracy." The Times, Internet Edition, October
28, 1999
"Once upon a time we used to have Members of Parliament
to debate matters of national importance for us. The present
Government works differently. It prefers to work by leaks,
in order to prompt public discussion that will help it to
decide what it will tell MPs to do." Country Life,
October 28, 1999, p. 45
"No place on Earth offers greater security to life and
greater freedom from natural disasters than Southern California."
Los Angeles Times, 1934 quoted from: Mike Davis, Ecology
of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (London,
1999)
"The House of Lords stripped of this magnificent and rich
legacy is as alluring as a whisky and soda without the whisky."
Peter Oborne in The Spectator, 20 November, 1999,
p. 13
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