Henceforth there are to be no fixed or inviolable principles of law at all—only an endlessly changing legal response to the fashionable causes of the… - Theodore Dalrymple

Compassionate fellow-feeling ... can soon become self-indulgent and lead to spiritual pride. It imparts an inner glow, like a shot of whiskey on a cold day, but like whisky it can prevent the clear-headedness which we need at least as much as we need warmth of heart.

It is strange, is it not, how the more strenuously we deny the importance of race in human affairs, the more obsessed with it and the touchier on the subject we grow.

Addicts, to this day, claim that they are they are the only people qualified to speak of the seriousness of withdrawal effects; as if only people with cerebral malaria or bowel cancer could speak of their seriousness.