Richard Beard > Quotes

“Miracles are disruptive. When the dust settles there is always damage done – not all the hungry are fed, and not all the sick are healed.”
― Richard Beard, Lazarus Is Dead

“Thomas has privileged information about the health status of Jesus in the period after the crucifixion”
― Richard Beard

“Dying is easy. Anyone can do it. Living is the problem – Lazarus has been brought back to life and he can’t explain himself.”
― Richard Beard, Lazarus Is Dead

“Death is the most predictable of life’s events. It is the opposite of a miracle.”
― Richard Beard, Lazarus Is Dead

“a defaulting not from prescribed activity but from prescribed being’.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“hardness of heart of the educated”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“An enduring mystery of boarding schools, at least for the children, was why parents chose to make this decision. The experience was harrowing enough in 1975, but also in 1950 and 1930 and 1910. What was wrong with these people? Had they no heart? In most cases, their education was to blame. The majority of fathers had suffered the same type of schooling themselves, so didn’t know any better.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“In the 1930s, Stalin asked his mother why, as a child, he was beaten so frequently. She replied: ‘It didn’t do you any harm.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“The end was within sight, and for ten years the aim had been exit velocity with a built character, a traditionally constructed self.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“The symptoms are wide-ranging but include, engrained from an early age, emotional detachment and dissociation, cynicism, exceptionalism, defensive arrogance, offensive arrogance, cliquism, compartmentalisation, guilt, grief, denial, strategic emotional misdirection and stiff-lipped stoicism. Fine fine fine. I’m fine.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“Unable to escape, we adapted. Back at school we killed one self and reanimated another, until we forgot which version, if either, was authentic.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“At Pinewood we had two nurses with confusing motherly bosoms, and one term a young Australian intern with whom every boy fell in love.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“I once saw a small boy screaming while horizontal with his hands clamped to the driver’s door of a Volvo estate, while his father tried to pull him off by the legs. The mother sat in the passenger seat, and the next time she heard from her son it would be by post.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“It’s as much of a coincidence as when a man marries a woman with the same first name as his mother.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“According to John a man died, was in a tomb for three days, and then on the Sunday he came back to life and walked away. A god is involved.
‘That figures.”
― Richard Beard, Acts of the Assassins

“I am all for the Public Schools but I do not want to go there again.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“The thread that unites the Britain of the 2020s with 1920 and 1820 is Orwell’s famous definition of the country as ‘a family with the wrong members in control’.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“I’d have to learn to escape while staying where I was.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“When he was Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, for example, Johnson claimed he ‘was acting out of loyalty to an old friend’ when he agreed to help locate a fellow journalist so his pal could have him physically assaulted. The ‘old friend’ was from school, of course he was, and the targeted journalist was not one of them (‘these people are … it’s like they’re like dogs’).”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“Listen. We are on a flight from Jerusalem to Antioch with a change at Schiphol. Whatever the destination, there is always a change at Schiphol.”
― Richard Beard, Acts of the Assassins

“The ten-week campaign was more of an instinct than a war, a twitching phantom limb of Britain’s avenging empire.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“Gallio submits a request to the Prefect of the Province of Judaea, in writing, to bring in a disciple from the leadership group. He doesn’t care which one, probably Peter. The way Cassius Gallio sees it he can play Peter off against Judas: the two former colleagues in separate rooms, neither of them sure what the other may confess. Then in the same room, to wonder how much pain the other can bear. Not that the interviews need descend into violence. The anticipation of pain is often enough. Pilate refuses Gallio’s request, also in writing. He’s covering his back. Pilate has seen no evidence to incriminate the disciples, and this is the Middle East. The zealots in the mountains are unpredictable, and in this particular region a riot could start a war. Cassius Gallio should avoid inflaming the situation, and an arrest would be a negative at this time.”
― Richard Beard, Acts of the Assassins

“Cassius Gallio had been right, but being right was overrated. Being smart was safer.”
― Richard Beard, Acts of the Assassins

“Sally was told that the boys were ‘scared shitless, and would have the piss ripped out of them for evermore. Which explained everything.’ A natural introvert, after Christmas Sally approached boys at random and talked to them.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

“I do know that they spent the formative years of their childhood in boarding schools being looked after by adults who didn’t love them, because I did too.”
― Richard Beard, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England