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The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.

A. N. Wilson

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A. N. Wilson
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Biographer
Historian
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Stone
Staffordshire
Andrew Norman Wilson
Concentrates
Certainly
Approach
Death
Mind

More quotes by A. N. Wilson

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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
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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
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I think I became a Catholic to annoy my father.
A. N. Wilson
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I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.
A. N. Wilson
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Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.
A. N. Wilson
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I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.
A. N. Wilson
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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
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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
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I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.
A. N. Wilson
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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
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In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.
A. N. Wilson
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Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.
A. N. Wilson
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I had lost faith in biography.
A. N. Wilson
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I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.
A. N. Wilson
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I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.
A. N. Wilson
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I wanted passionately to be a priest.
A. N. Wilson
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The latest research has revealed that women have a higher IQ than men.
A. N. Wilson
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In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same.
A. N. Wilson
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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
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One symptom of his (Hitler) being strangely at variance with reality, or the nature of things,was his gift for wearing inappropriate of ludicrous clothing...When he was supposed to be starting a militaristic revolution he was wearing evening dress and an ill-fitting black tailcoat...and his army medals.
A. N. Wilson