A. N. Wilson: Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those wh...

It is the woman - nearly always - in spite of all the advances of modern feminism, who still takes responsibility for the bulk of the chores, as well as doing her paid job. This is true even in households where men try to be unselfish and to do their share.

A. N. Wilson

responsibility jobs men

A busybody's work is never done.

A. N. Wilson

busybodies done

My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.

A. N. Wilson

light acceptance people

Hitler suffered acutely from meteorism; perhaps he did not suffer so acutely as those around him, since meteorism is uncontrolled farting, a condition exacerbated by Hitler's strictly vegetarian diet.

A. N. Wilson

diets vegetarian-diet suffering

Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.

A. N. Wilson

church christian listening

IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.

A. N. Wilson

tests modern-life thinking

One symptom of his (Hitler) being strangely at variance with reality, or the nature of things,was his gift for wearing inappropriate of ludicrous clothing...When he was supposed to be starting a militaristic revolution he was wearing evening dress and an ill-fitting black tailcoat...and his army medals.

A. N. Wilson

black army reality

Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.

A. N. Wilson

exercise birthday school

The latest research has revealed that women have a higher IQ than men.

A. N. Wilson

higher research men

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

A. N. Wilson

dictatorship remarkable children

In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity - or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity - by being opinionated rather than by being learned.

A. N. Wilson

circles intellectual education

In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same.

A. N. Wilson

class water people

The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen and Prince Philip have never shared a bedroom in their lives. They don't even have breakfast together.

A. N. Wilson

family queens house

It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.

A. N. Wilson

opposites history thinking

This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of.

A. N. Wilson

mistake war book

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

A. N. Wilson

wise men years

We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect.

A. N. Wilson

organized worthy formal

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.

A. N. Wilson

giants dragons monsters

I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.

A. N. Wilson

church house believe

We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.

A. N. Wilson

dad god mean

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.