University Of Oxford Alumni

"What delighted me was that it's 30 years from now — not next week or next year. … That would be totally hopeless; that would be terrifying, in fact. Time is on our side in this one — that's why it's such a wonderful illustration of the process... I say 30 years is a good long time to do something about it if it is a problem … We should be thankful we have this kind of notice."

"It is probably a good idea to search, at some level, for asteroids that come to the Earth's general vicinity. But merely counting the asteroids found is not sufficient. It is desirable to follow up each discovery to examine whether it can or can not be a threat during the next century or so. Objects for which the threat cannot be eliminated should be singled out for special study, notably to the extent of searching for old images in photographic archives. 1997 XF11 was noteworthy for the apathy shown to it prior to the very widespead announcement in March. If proper attention had been given to it earlier, the circumstances that led to the announcement would never have occurred. Sometimes statistics will conspire to draw attention to a problem. Maybe they are trying to tell us something."

"When the Deep Impact probe hit Comet 9P/Tempel, there was almost no change in brightness. … This outburst by Comet Holmes is extreme!"

"This is a terrific outburst. And since it doesn’t have a tail right now, some observers have confused it with a nova. We’ve had at least two reports of a new star."

"What thing is love?—for (well I wot) love is a thing It is a prick, it is a sting, It is a pretty, pretty thing; It is a fire, it is a coal, Whose flame creeps in at every hole!"

"My merry, merry, merry roundelay Concludes with Cupid’s curse: They that do change old love for new, Pray gods, they change for worse!"

"His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, And lovers’ songs be turned to holy psalms; A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are old age’s alms."

"His golden locks time hath to silver turned; O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing! His youth ’gainst time and age hath ever spurned, But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing."

"Villain, a horse-- Villain, I say, give me a horse to fly, To swim the river, villain, and to fly."

"O Gentle Love, ungentle for thy deede, Thou makest my hart, A bloodie marke, With piercing shot to bleede.Shoote soft sweete Love, for feare thou shoote amisse, For feare too keene, Thy arrowes beene: And hit the hart, where my belovèd is.Too faire that fortune were, nor never I Shall be so blest, Among the rest: That love shall ceaze on her by simpathy.Then since with Love my prayers beare no boote, This doth remaine, To cease my paine, I take the wound, and die at Venus foote."

"A sweet attractive kinde of grace, A full assurance given by lookes, Continuall comfort in a face The lineaments of Gospell bookes."

"Was never eie did see that face, Was never eare did heare that tong, Was never minde did minde his grace, That ever thought the travell long; But eies and eares and ev'ry thought Were with his sweete perfections caught."

"It is in the exceeding rapture of delight in the deepe search of knowledge, none knoweth better than thyselfe, sweet Mathew, that maketh men manfully indure th'extremes incident to that Herculean labour."

"[He] hath shewed himselfe singular in the immortall Epitaph of his beloved Astrophell, besides many other most absolute Comike inventions."

"What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go."

"Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?"

"[T]hink of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself."

"'You too will marry a boy I choose,' said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter. Lata avoided the maternal imperative by looking around the great lamp-lit garden of Prem Nivas. The wedding-guests were gathered on the lawn. 'Hmm,' she said. This annoyed her mother further."

"Imagining the flower-pot attacked it The kitten flung the violets near and far And yet, who knows? This morning, as I backed it, My car was set upon by a parked car."

"All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hands to left or right, And emptiness above— Know that you aren’t alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all their years."

"Some men like Jack and some like Jill I'm glad I like them both but still I wonder if this freewheeling Really is an enlightened thing, Or is its greater scope a sign Of deviance from some party line? In the strict ranks of Gay and Straight What is my status: Stray? Or Great?"

"In portraying a domestic life constrained, disrupted, and transformed by civil violence, Seth draws on the nineteenth-century historical novels of Scott, Alessandro Manzoni, Theodore Fontane, and Leo Tolstoy."

"The diversity and range of Seth's work makes him somewhat of an enigma. However, for a writer who counts such diverse figures as Pushkin, T'ang dynasty Chinese poets, Chaucer, the Elizabethans, Tennyson, novelists like Hardy, Austen, George Eliot, R. K. Narayan, and modern poets like Timothy Steele and Philip Larkin among some of his literary influences, Seth's wide-ranging technique is conceivably not so surprising."

"Like Midnight's Children, however, A Suitable Boy too is steeped in an awareness of and affection for indigenous literary and cultural traditions, most notably Urdu poetry, Hindustani classical music, the performed Ramayana, the Ramlila, Shia marsiyas or lamentations, Tagore's songs ('Rabindra Sangeet'), and, of course, Hindi cinema."

"In A Suitable Boy, Seth's traditionalism allows him to rediscover character. Mrs Rupa Mehra becomes too substantial, too vivid a presence to be confined within a novel: she is at once infuriating and endearing, a benevolent Indian version of Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, a comparison that Seth is typically careful to suggest by equipping her daughter with a Jane Austen novel to read on a train."

"A Suitable Boy (which burlesques poetic pretensions) reads like the offspring of an unlikely mating of Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy, with its father's looks and mother's temperament."

"Vikram Seth's book A Suitable Boy (1993) that made history as a publishing phenomenon heralded the change from an economist-poet to a full-time writer, making millions in pounds. The media dwelt on its 700,000 words and 1,349 pages, the longest novel published in England since Richardson's Clarissa (1744-48) and longer than Tolstoy's War and Peace (1865-69) — and on Seth's advance of more than 2 million pounds. More relevant are the artistic comparisons made to Jane Austen, George Eliot, Tolstoy and Dickens."

"He writes with the omniscience and authority of a large, orderly committee of experts on Indian politics, law, medicine, crowd psychology, urban and rural social customs, dress, cuisine, horticulture, funerary rites, cricket and even the technicalities of shoe manufacture."

"How ugly babies are! How heedless Of all else than their bulging selves— Like sumo wrestlers, plush with needless Kneadable flesh-like mutant elves, Plump and vindictively nocturnal, With lungs determined and infernal (A pity that the blubbering blobs Come unequipped with volume knobs)."

"Ten hostages is terrorism; A million, and it's strategy. To ban books is fanaticism; To threaten in totality All culture and all civilization, All humankind and all creation, This is a task of decorous skill And needs high statesmanship and will."

"Killing is dying. This equation Carries no mystical import. It is the literal truth. Our nation Has long believed war was a sport. Unoccupied, unbombed, undying, While 'over there' the shells were flying, How could we know the Russian dread Of war, the mountains of their dead? We reveled in acceleration At every level of the race; And even now we're face to face With mutual extermination We talk as blithely as before Of 'surgical strikes' and 'limited war.'"

"Workers of Lungless Labs—when dying Will you be proud you were midwife To implements exemplifying Assault against the heart of life? If you had scruples, you betrayed them. What pastoral response acquits Those who made ovens for Auschwitz? You knew their purpose, yet you made them. Indeed, it's said that the banality Of evil is its greatest shock. It jokes, it punches its time clock, Plays with its kids. The triviality Of slaughtering millions can't impinge Upon its peace, or make it cringe."

"Catholic and Episcopalian, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, We are all here; no one is alien Now radiation's common laws Impel us into common cause."

"They go to work, attend a meeting, Write an equation, have a beer, Hail colleagues with a cheerful greeting, Are conscientious, sane, sincere, Rational, able, and fastidious. Through hardened casings no invidious Tapeworm of doubt, no guilt, no qualm Pierces to sabotage their calm. When something's technically attractive, You follow the conception through, That's all. What if you leave a slew Of living dead, of radioactive "Collateral damage" in its wake? It's just a job, for heaven's sake."

"In life's brief game to be a winner A man must have...oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love."

"Bloody men are like bloody buses - You wait for about a year And as soon as one approaches your stop Two or three others appear."

"As a journalist, my job is to be dispassionate. Suddenly to be the centre of a story and to be crying, it made me feel very insecure."

"The Nazi murder squads just wouldn't waste a bullet on a child. I just couldn't process that. I couldn't handle it."

"Sciatica: he cured it, by boyling his buttock."

"His insatiable passion for singular odds and ends had a meaning in it; he was groping towards a scientific ordering of phenomena; but the twilight of his age was too confusing, and he could rarely distinguish between a fact and a fantasy."

"He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased."

"This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart."

"Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition: Being demanded, whether a good Spirit, or a bad? returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious Perfume and most melodious Twang. Mr. W. Lilly believes it was a Farie."

"His Comoedies will remaine witt as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum [the ways of mankind]. Now our present writers reflect so much on particular persons and coxcombeities that twenty yeares hence they will not be understood."

"His father was a Butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's Trade, but when he kill'd a Calfe he would doe it in high style, and make a Speech."

"Sir Walter, being strangely supprized and putt out of his countenance at so great a Table, gives his son a damned blow over the face; his son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face of the Gentleman that sate next to him, and sayed, Box about, 'twill come to my Father anon. 'Tis now a common used Proverb."

"His manner of Studie was thus…About every three houres his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of Ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and dranke, and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then, he made a good Supper: now he did well not to dine, which breakes off one's fancy, which will not presently be regained: and 'tis with Invention as a flux, when once it is flowing, it runnes amaine: if it is checked, flowes but guttim [drop by drop]: and the like for perspiration, check it, and 'tis spoyled."

"He was a learned man, of immense reading, but is much blamed for his unfaithfull quotations."

"I remember about 1660 there was a great difference between him and Sir Hierome Sanchy, one of Oliver's knights…The Knight had been a Soldier, and challenged Sir William to fight with him. Sir William is extremely short sighted, and being the challengee it belonged to him to nominate place and weapon. He nominates, for the place, a darke Cellar, and the weapon to be a great Carpenter's Axe. This turned the knight's challenge into Ridicule, and so it came to nought."

"He pronounced the letter R (littera canina) very hard – a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt."