I expect my Presidents to be heretics, but I think it matters a great deal what kind of heretics they are.

There is no precise moment that separates those who are ready to fornicate or buy beer from those who are not. Does this mean that it would make perfect sense to raise the drinking age to 70, or lower the marriage age to 5? Of course not. Similarly, the lack of an objectively sharp boundary for moral values does not mean that distinctions do not exist. They do not force us to doubt that, say, five-year-olds really are people, deserving of life and respect, and clumps of dirt are not.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

It is true that, since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, messianic passions have not shaped continental European religious life as profoundly as they have in the United States. But it is equally true that continental Europe has been less prepared intellectually to cope with such passions when they do arise and become a force in politics.

There will never be any way of knowing whether the outcome of Tuesday's election would have been different had the Tories lived by the spirit of their fixed-date election law and not called a snap vote.

In the final years of what has been one of the worst decades this century for stock-market investors, a growing number of baby boomers like Dr. Palanisamy have reshaped their attitudes about risk and return.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, 'denigrate' means 'put down'.

All these worries disappear if one makes use of a lifeless human body for this purpose. The sight of a corpse evokes solemnity and reflection, and this is the most appropriate mood for a child under such circumstances. By a natural association of ideas, his memory of the scene will also produce a solemn frame of mind in the future.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to.