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Those Who Professed Themselves Unable To Believe In The Reality Of Human Progress Ought To Cheer Themselves Up, As The Students Under Examination Had Conceivably Been Cheered Up, By A Short Study Of The Middle Ages. The Hydrogen Bomb, The South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator Mccarthy Himself, Would Then Seem A Light Price To Pay For No Longer Being In The Middle Ages.

-Kingsley Amis

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Those Who Professed Themselves

Kingsley Amis

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Those Who Professed Themselves Unable To Believe In The Reality Of Human Progress Ought To Cheer Themselves Up, As The Students Under Examination Had Conceivably Been Cheered Up, By A Short Study Of The Middle Ages. The Hydrogen Bomb, The South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator Mccarthy Himself, Would Then Seem A Light Price To Pay For No Longer Being In The Middle Ages.

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Those Who Professed Themselves Unable To Believe In The Reality Of Human Progress Ought To Cheer Themselves Up, As The Students Under Examination Had Conceivably Been Cheered Up, By A Short Study Of The Middle Ages. The Hydrogen Bomb, The South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator Mccarthy Himself, Would Then Seem A Light Price To Pay For No Longer Being In The Middle Ages.

Those Who Professed Themselves Unable To Believe In The Reality Of Human Progress Ought To Cheer Themselves Up, As The Students Under Examination Had Conceivably Been Cheered Up, By A Short Study Of The Middle Ages. The Hydrogen Bomb, The South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator Mccarthy Himself, Would Then Seem A Light Price To Pay For No Longer Being In The Middle Ages.

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Nice Things Are Nicer Than Nasty Ones.

We Should Be Wrong To Demand That A Critic Must Stay On The Point All The Time; It Is Enough If He Remains In Orbit Around It.

Doing What You Wanted To Do Was The Only Training, And The Only Preliminary, Needed For Doing More Of What You Wanted To Do.

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Misprize Common Sense At Your Peril Is My Motto.

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The Human Race Has Not Devised Any Way Of Dissolving Barriers, Getting To Know The Other Chap Fast, Breaking The Ice, That Is One-tenth As Handy And Efficient As Letting You And The Other Chap, Or Chaps, Cease To Be Totally Sober At About The Same Rate In Agreeable Surroundings.

The Ideal Of Brotherhood Of Man, The Building Of The Just City, Is One That Cannot Be Discarded Without Lifelong Feelings Of Disappointment And Loss. But, If We Are To Live In The Real World, Discard It We Must.

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It Is Natural And Harmless In English To Use A Preposition To End A Sentence With.

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[science Fiction Is] That Class Of Prose Narrative Treating Of A Situation That Could Not Arise In The World We Know, But Which Is Hypothesised On The Basis Of Some Innovation In Science Or Technology, Or Pseudo-science Or Pseudo-technology, Whether Human Or Extra-terrestrial In Origin. It Is Distinguished From Pure Fantasy By Its Need To Achieve Verisimilitude And Win The 'willing Suspension Of Disbelief' Through Scientific Plausibility.

Women Are Really Much Nicer Than Men: No Wonder We Like Them.

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A German Wine Label Is One Of The Things Life's Too Short For, A Daunting Testimony To That Peculiar Nation's Love Of Detail And Organization.

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Be Glad You're Fifty - Andthat You Got There While Things Were Nice,in A World Worth Looking At Twice.so Here's Wishing You Many More Years,but Not All That Many. Cheers!

How Wrong People Always Were When They Said: 'it's Better To Know The Worst Than Go On Not Knowing Either Way.' No; They Had It Exactly The Wrong Way Round. Tell Me The Truth, Doctor, I'd Sooner Know. But Only If The Truth Is What I Want To Hear.

He Was Of The Faith Chiefly In The Sense That The Church He Currently Did Not Attend Was Catholic.

I Sometimes Feel That More Lousy Dishes Are Presented Under The Banner Of Pate Than Any Other.

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How Wrong People Always Were When They Said: 'it's Better To Know The Worst Than Go On Not Knowing Either Way.' No; They Had It Exactly The Wrong Way Round. Tell Me The Truth, Doctor, I'd Sooner Know. But Only If The Truth Is What I Want To Hear.

Now And Then I Become Conscious Of Having The Reputation Of Being One Of The Great Drinkers, If Not One Of The Great Drunks, Of Our Time.

Doing What You Wanted To Do Was The Only Training, And The Only Preliminary, Needed For Doing More Of What You Wanted To Do.

It Is No Wonder That People Are So Horrible When They Start Life As Children.

Whatever Part Drink May Play In The Writer's Life, It Must Play None In His Or Her Work.

I'll Pour You The First One And After That, If You Don't Have One, It's Your Own F****** Fault. You Know Where It Is.

I Am Always Incorrigibly Interested In The Behaviour Of The 'human Animal', And Look Forward To Perusing Divers Effusions Of Your Lively Pen.

It's A Letdown If The Comedian Doesn't Finally Actually Really Sit On His Hat.

It Scored Right Away With Me By Being The Smooth, Fine-grained Sort, Not The Coarse Flaky, Dry-on-the-outside Rubbish Full Of Chunds Of Gut And Gristle To Testify To Its Authenticity.

Growing Older, I Have Lost The Need To Be Political, Which Means ... The Need To Be Left. I Am Driven To Grudging Toleration Of The Conservative Party Because It Is The Party Of Non-politics, Of Resistance To Politics.

I Wish I Could Have A Little Tape-and-loudspeaker Arrangement Sewn Into The Binding Of This Magazine, To Be Triggered Off By The Light Reflected From The Reader's Eyes On To This Part Of The Page, And Set To Bawl Out At Several Bels: More Will Mean Worse.

Jake Was Close To Tears. In That Moment He Saw The World In Its True Light, As A Place Where Nothing Had Ever Been Any Good And Nothing Of Significance Done: No Art Worth A Second Look, No Philosophy Of The Slightest Appositeness, No Law But Served The State, No History That Gave An Inkling Of How It Had Been And What Had Happened. And No Love, Only Egotism, Infatuation And Lust.

Outside Every Fat Man There Is An Even Fatter Man Trying To Close In.

Self Criticism Must Be My Guide To Action, And The First Rule For Its Employment Is That In Itself It Is Not A Virtue, Only A Procedure.

Politics Is A Thing That Only The Unsophisticated Can Really Go For.

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When That Ineffable Compound Of Depression, Sadness (these Two Are Not The Same), Anxiety, Self-hatred, Sense Of Failure And Fear For The Future Begins To Steal Over You, Start Telling Yourself That What You Have Is A Hangover. You Are Not Sickening For Anything, You Have Not Suffered A Minor Brain Lesion, You Are Not All That Bad At Your Job, Your Family And Friends Are Not Leagued In A Conspiracy Of Barely Maintained Silence About What A S**t You Are, You Have Not Come At Last To See Life As It Really Is And There Is No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk.

Feeling A Tremendous Rakehell, And Not Liking Myself Much For It, And Feeling Rather A Good Chap For Not Liking Myself Much For It, And Not Liking Myself At All For Feeling Rather A Good Chap.

Self Criticism Must Be My Guide To Action, And The First Rule For Its Employment Is That In Itself It Is Not A Virtue, Only A Procedure.

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He Who Truly Believes He Has A Hangover Has No Hangover.

When Starting To Think About Any Novel, Part Of The Motive Is: I'm Going To Show Them, This Time.

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Whatever Part Drink May Play In The Writer's Life, It Must Play None In His Or Her Work.

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I Was Never An Angry Young Man. I Am Angry Only When I Hit My Thumb With A Hammer.

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Cats Are Only Human, They Have Their Faults.

The Human Race Has Not Devised Any Way Of Dissolving Barriers, Getting To Know The Other Chap Fast, Breaking The Ice, That Is One-tenth As Handy And Efficient As Letting You And The Other Chap, Or Chaps, Cease To Be Totally Sober At About The Same Rate In Agreeable Surroundings.

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With Some Exceptions In Science Fiction And Other Genres I Have Small Difficulty In Avoiding Anything That Could Be Called American Literature. I Feel It Is Unnatural, Not I Think Entirely Because It Uses A Language That Is Not Mine, However Closely Akin To My Own.

Outside Every Fat Man There Is An Even Fatter Man Trying To Close In.

Politics Is A Thing That Only The Unsophisticated Can Really Go For.

When I Find Someone I Respect Writing About An Edgy, Nervous Wine That Dithered In The Glass, I Cringe. When I Hear Someone I Don't Respect Talking About An Austere, Unforgiving Wine, I Turn A Bit Austere And Unforgiving Myself. When I Come Across Stuff Like That And Remember About The Figs And Bananas, I Want To Snigger Uneasily. You Can Call A Wine Red, And Dry, And Strong, And Pleasant. After That, Watch Out.

Twentieth Century Music Is Like Paedophilia. No Matter How Persuasively And Persistently Its Champions Urge Their Cause, It Will Never Be Accepted By The Public At Large, Who Will Continue To Regard It With Incomprehension, Outrage And Repugnance.

If There's One Word That Sums Up Everything That's Gone Wrong Since The War, It's Workshop. After Youth, That Is.

Only A World Without Love Strikes Me As Instantly And Decisively More Terrible Than One Without Music.

To Refer Even In Passing To Unpublished Or Struggling Authors And Their Problems Is To Put Oneself At Some Risk, So I Will Say Here And Now That Any Unsolicited Manuscripts Or Typescripts Sent To Me Will Be Destroyed Unread. You Must Make Your Way Yourself. Why You Should Be So Set On The Nearly Always Disappointing Profession Is A Puzzling Question.

Being American Is, I Think, A Very Difficult Thing In Art, Because All The Elements Are European.

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