Jonathan Swift

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.

In 1938, I was given a one-year teaching appointment, which was sensational for British universities. This was converted into the usual four-year contract for an Assistant Lecturer in 1939.

Democracy, loudly upheld as a cure for much of the ailing world, has proved no guarantor of political wisdom, even if it remains the least bad form of government.