It was the Greeks who taught us the dignity of leisure; it is from them that we inherit the perception that the highest life is the life of contemplation. But this respect for leisure, with the Greeks, was accompanied by a contempt for the banausic occupations.

These two tendencies correspond, mutatis mutandis, with the development of symbolism and allegorism in twentieth-century literature.

The Soviet chief’s East Berlin address Sunday had the sound of the classic superpower superblast that uses thousands of words to say practically nothing new.

In 1920, votes at the Republican National Convention were selling at $2,500 on the hoof.