Menashe Mautner, a disabled veteran of the First World War with a wooden leg, fell on the icy pavements of Vienna and lay there three hours vainly as… - Paul Johnson

The cultural and political strands of change could not be separated, any more than during the turbulence of revolution and romanticism of 1790–1830. It has been noted that James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin were all resident-exiles in Zurich in 1916, waiting for their time to come.

Zohar-kabbalah is heresy of the most pernicious kind. Yet it is a fact that this kind of mystic pantheism exercises a curious appeal to very clever people whose customary approach to thought is soberly rational. By a remarkable paradox, the current of speculation which was to carry Spinoza out of Judaism brought him to pantheism too, so that he was the end-product both of the rationalism of Maimonides and the anti-rationalism of his opponents.

Augustine was struck by the fact, when they first met, that Ambrose read to himself, a habit unknown to the classical world: 'His eyes scanned the page, and his mind penetrated its meaning, but his voice and tongue were silent.' There were other impressive things about Ambrose.