Sublime

He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote.

Journalism, according to G.K. Chesterton in the 1920s, ‘largely consists in saying “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive’.

Alexander the Great: ‘I am dying with the help of too many physicians.’

As a person “thinks within himself, so he is” (Prov. 23:7).

A line from the British literary giant Samuel Johnson floated through my mind.

as I acquired a facility in recollecting, and was very assiduous in recording, his conversation, of which the extraordinary vigour and vivacity constituted one of the first features of his character;