Quote

I was once naïve enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked the town of Eastbourne. He replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it.

A. N. Wilson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

A. N. Wilson
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Biographer
Historian
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Stone
Staffordshire
Andrew Norman Wilson
Things
Replied
Town
Towns
Liked
Deprecating
Late
Shrug
Asks
Duke
Self
Dukes
Enough
Owned

More quotes by A. N. Wilson

Image
Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.
A. N. Wilson
Image
I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.
A. N. Wilson
Image
The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen and Prince Philip have never shared a bedroom in their lives. They don't even have breakfast together.
A. N. Wilson
Image
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.
A. N. Wilson
Image
The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.
A. N. Wilson
Image
Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.
A. N. Wilson
Image
IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.
A. N. Wilson
Image
As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated.
A. N. Wilson
Image
I think that if you can't be loyal to the Church, it's best to get out.
A. N. Wilson
Image
I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.
A. N. Wilson
Image
I wanted passionately to be a priest.
A. N. Wilson
Image
It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.
A. N. Wilson
Image
It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.
A. N. Wilson
Image
My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.
A. N. Wilson
Image
I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.
A. N. Wilson
Image
Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.
A. N. Wilson
Image
The death of any man aged 56 is very sad for his widow and family. And no one would deny that Steve Jobs was a brilliant and highly innovative technician, with great business flair and marketing ability.
A. N. Wilson
Image
I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.
A. N. Wilson
Image
Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.
A. N. Wilson
Image
On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.
A. N. Wilson