¶ Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. • Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
¶ “It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.” • James Thurber (1944)
¶ “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call ‘promising.’” • Cyril Connolly (1938)
¶ “Amid the restaurant's spotless white napery and percussive cutlery, the politicians hatched their coup.” • Will Self (2018)
¶ “Oxford is a plexus [network] of anomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject to the same Statutes, affiliated to the same College, reading for the same School; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of noble and castellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually thousands and thousands of pounds, and the other’s people had but one little mean square of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke’s whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke’s First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure, on the whole. [p-break] ‘Come in, Noaks,’ said the Duke. ‘You have been to a lecture?’ [p-break] ‘Aristotle’s Politics,’ nodded Noaks. • Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson (1911)
¶ “‘The roar of London,’ said Louis, ‘is round us. Motor-cars, vans, omnibuses pass and repass continuously. All are merged in one turning wheel of single sound. All separate sounds — wheels, bells, the cries of drunkards, of merrymakers — are churned into one sound, steel blue, circular. Then a siren hoots. At that shores slip away, chimneys flatten themselves, the ship makes for the open sea.’” • Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931)

¶ Legal [Irish] emigration [to the United States] in any significant numbers is over. ... [A] more distant connection will be the reality. ... Some 37 percent of Irish-Americans under 45 have never been to Ireland, according to a recent NYU - IrishCentral - Amarach Research study of 1,388 Irish-Americans. Only 34 per percent have joined Irish organizations. ... The need for a powerful, united Irish Government output of information, insight, travel stories, history lessons, and genealogy information has never been greater. • Niall O'Dowd (IrishCentral | 29 Jan 2018)

 ¶ Monocle’s Meet the Writers for July 5, 2020: Georgina Godwin’s excellent interview, primarily about slavery, with Vincent Brown, a professor of African and African-American studies and director of the History Design Studio at Harvard
¶ RTÉ Culture page about Kate O’Brien, with Davis Lecture contributions from Eavan Boland and Lorna Reynolds