Balliol Quotes

“I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast, as I often did on Sundays, at a tea-shop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from the surrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the open spaces, dispelled the fears of night. The tea-shop was hushed as a library; a few solitary men in bedroom slippers from Balliol and Trinity looked up as I entered, then turned back to their Sunday newspapers. I ate my scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless night. I lit a cigarette and sat on, while one by one the Balliol and Trinity men paid their bills and shuffled away, slip-slop, across the street to their colleges. It was nearly eleven when I left, and during my walk I heard the change-ringing cease and, all over the town, give place to the single chime which warned the city that service was about to start.”
― Evelyn Waugh , Brideshead Revisited

“He was not a man to inspire devotion. He had lost his throne in the most ignominious of ways and, once removed from Scotland, was content to allow others to risk their lives and lands on his behalf. But Wallace and Soules were not romantics. They were under no illusions as to Balliol's quality. Hard-headed and practical, they saw in Balliol a symbol of choice and therefore of freedom.”
― Andrew Fisher, William Wallace