Activity

One of my daughters teaches in a state college in which the aspirations of most of the students are to become a nurse or a policeman. The first day of class (she teaches history) she usually asks her students to identify their class background. And it turns out there are two answers. Either they’re…

But it’s utterly ridiculous to say that people are vile. If we step outside and pay a brief visit to the nearest supermarket or the nearest café, we’ll find ourselves in a position to see, scattered perhaps among scenes of ugliness and greed, examples of behavior that is thoughtful or kind, moments…

He had learnt music in the same way that a scholar from the Academy of Inscriptions learns or pretends to learn Persian. He had learnt to admire such and such a piece, the first quality always lay in a sound that was just right, in a phrase that was perfectly correct.

[...] When I left Lussinge the most dismal time of the day would begin for me. I went, in that year's great heat, to seek the shade and a little coolness beneath the great chestnut trees of the Tuileries. 'Since I can't forget her, wouldn't I do better to kill myself?' I'd think. Everything was bur…

[...] This Mme Lavenelle is as dry as a piece of parchment and in any case has no wit, and above all no passion, and it's quite impossible for her to be affected other than by the sturdy thighs of a company of grenadiers parading through the garden of the Tuileries in white kerseymere knickerbock…