Mrs Hapgood gave Stanislavski a machine into which he was supposed to dictate his accumulated wisdom. He duly turned it on, uttered the words ‘Art is—’ and stopped. He tried this many times, but was never able to get beyond those two words. Robin Prising

The problem with stopping Imperialism is that people like to be imperialistic. Alwa van Geuns

Thie history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian—ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. Lytton Strachey