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A wooden expression had crept into his features, and his eyes had taken on the look of cautious reserve which you see in those of parrots, when offered half a banana by a stranger of whose bona fides they are not convinced.

I had been right about the strengthening effect on the character of the vicissitudes to which I had been subjected since clocking in at the country residence of Sir Watkyn Bassett. Little by little, bit by bit, they had been moulding me, turning me from a sensitive clubman and boulevardier to a man of chilled steel.

Finished book 2: 'Adulthood Rites'.

The fact that he was fifty quid in the red and expecting Civilisation to take a toss at any moment had caused Uncle Tom, who always looked a bit like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow, to take on a deeper melancholy.

'Jeeves,' I said,'a V-shaped rumminess has manifested itself from the direction of Worcestershire.'

Finished book 1: 'Dawn'. Excellent novel. I'm amazed I never heard if this series until recently.

"Without recourse to eternal souls and a Creator God, it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to explain what is so special about individual Sapiens."

"Embarrassingly difficult to explain" is Harari's equivalent of the argument that goes "common sense says..." or "all rational people agree..." or "everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot...".

The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90 per cent of all money - more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts - exists only on computer servers.

It is telling that the first recorded name in history belongs to an accountant, rather than a prophet, a poet or a great conqueror.

Until the late modern era, more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows. The extra they produced fed the tiny minority of elites--kings, government officials, soldiers, priests, artists and thinkers--who fill the history books. History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was tilling fields and carrying water buckets.

The hunter-gatherer way of life differed significantly from region to region and from season to season, but on the whole foragers seem to have enjoyed a more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle than most of the peasants, shepherds, labourers and office clerks who followed in their footsteps.

Many animals and human species could previously say, 'Careful! A lion!' Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo Sapiens acquired the ability to say, 'The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.' This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.

Hell is eternal apartness. What had she done that she must spend the rest of her years reaching out with yearning for them, making secret trips to long ago, making no journey to the present ? I am their blood and bones, I have dug in this ground, this is my home. But I am not their blood, the ground doesn’t care who digs it, I am a stranger at a cocktail party.

And, you see, what makes this even more remarkable is that during the dark month of January, my first month with the aunt and uncle, I had fallen into a morbific depression and so had prescribed to myself the cure of reading lots of Wodehouse.

They’d nodded to each other at art galleries and auctions. Duggan’s nod had said, ‘I know your game.’ The Count’s nod had been that of the well-fed fox to a chicken it could not be bothered to eat. ‘Not today. But soon.'

He looked at Paris and he thought it would be all right if they spent a weekend cleaning it. It seemed to be a city of teenagers waiting for someone else to clean up after them. Even the dogs were prolifically lazy, turning every walk into a grimacing game of hopscotch.

I have never laughed out loud so often on public transport. Not even the last time I read this.

Tuppy had the unmistakable air of a man who has recently been round to the Jug and Bottle. A few cheery cries of welcome, presumably from some of his backgammon-playing pals who felt that blood was thicker than water, had the effect of causing the genial smile on his face to widen till it nearly met at the back. He was plainly feeling about as good as a man can feel and still remain on his feet.

'Jeeves,' I said, a little severely, 'whenever I suggest a plan or scheme or course of action, you are too apt to say "Well, sir", in a nasty tone of voice. I do not like it, and it is a habit you should check. The plan or scheme or course of action which I have outlined contains no flaw. If it does I should like to hear it.'

'Well, sir--'

'Jeeves!'

In the Beginning there was great potency, but little form. And the spirit slept as the multitude of discrete primordial existents. Thenceforth there has been a long and fluctuating adventure toward harmonious complexity of form, and toward the awakening of the spirit into unity, knowledge, delight and self-expression.

The Fifth Men: With meticulous love they would figure out the life stories of extinct types, such as the brontosaurus, the hippopotamus, the chimpanzee, the Englishman, the American, as also of the still extant amoeba.

Some pretty good forecasting, for 1930:

'Moreover the American press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the aether reverberated with echoes of New York's pleasures and the religious fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race.'

I don't know if you've ever met my Uncle George. He's a festive old egg who wanders from club to club continually having a couple with other festive old eggs. When he heaves in sight, waiters brace themselves up and the wine-steward toys with his corkscrew. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

He would seem from contemporary accounts to have blown in one morning at seven-forty-five, that being the ghastly sort of hour they shoot you off the liner in New York. He was given the respectful raspberry by Jeeves, and told to try again about three hours later, when there would be a sporting chance of my having sprung from my bed with a glad cry to welcome another day and all that sort of thing.

Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex