Quotes Library

August 5, 2025

[On being prime minister] Sometimes the strain is awful, you have to resort to Jane Austen.

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986), British Conservative politician, prime minister, in the Butler Papers; Peter Hennessy The Hidden Wiring (1995), Jay p.245

How well do you deal with strain? Is that the best you can do?

Better Austen, than alcohol, affairs, or alternative strategies for relieving the strain. Besides, in every Austen novel, after great turmoil, things turn out right in the end.


More Quotes

April 24, 2025
00:59
Generosity is part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it
September 24, 2025
In the end, it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
February 12, 2025
Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go well together.
Page 72 of 122