Simon Raven

"Scholarship was one thing, drudgery another."

"Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal."

"He replaced his glasses, which were now smeared with mucus, and manfully assumed what he liked to think was the cautious but enlightened manner of one born to high responsibility which only conscience forbade him abrogate as modesty suggested."

"Christ asked for everything he got."

"And so, at the age of thirty, I had successively disgraced myself with three fine institutions, each of which had made me free of its full and rich resources, had trained me with skill and patience, and had shown me nothing but forbearance and charity when I failed in trust."

"Dusk is the time when men whisper of matters about which they remain silent in the full light of the sun."

"Rose girl, bearing your posies, What are you coming to sell? Is it yourself or your roses, Or yourself and your roses as well?"

"Nobody minded what you did in bed or what you said about God, a very civilized attitude in 1948."

"I loved the Army as an institution and loathed every single thing it required me to do."

"In becoming the universe God abdicated. He destroyed himself as God. He turned what he had been, his true self, into nullity and thereby forfeited the Godlike qualities which pertained to him. The universe which he has become is also his grave. He has no control in it or over it. God, as God, is dead."

"The highest moral character can procure one no preference among the shades."