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A fun thing to do is imagine that Niall is actually the famous historian Niall Ferguson. Like maybe he travelled back from this terrible future and that's why he's all worried about civilization.

Cordial detestation. (Schoolmaster)
I like their generosity, but I dislike their wealthy condescension. (Forester)
I do not like their habit of preening themselves and their way of life before the world and of giving advice to the rest of us in a somewhat sermonising manner. (Civil servant)
- answers to 'what do you think of Americans'

"...and then made him try to hold onto that time in this book, years later, when he was older and had left New York for good. Like the rest of us, he wanted it back again, back the way it was."

"I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers—for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions."

"Statistics about the souls of failed light-seekers were difficult to compile"

Orwell’s funeral took place at Christ Church, Albany Street (lesson chosen by Anthony Powell, clergyman ‘excessively parsonical’, coffin poignantly long)

"The film ends in nostalgic wartime mood, with the state once again benign, community spirit strong, and an unnatural heat wave giving way to reassuring rain and cold."

Who’s going to make the people realize that food dismissed as “ethnic” by the fine-dining world could be produced at the same level as their sacred bouillabaisses and veloutés?

Swedes traditionally prefer a pickle that is salty, sour, and quite sweet. To achieve that blend of flavors, we use a solution called 1-2-3: one part vinegar, two parts sugar, three parts water.

The Civil Code’s clarity and efficiency are the chief reasons French business thrived during the nineteenth century in spite of political instability. Its universal acceptance and the overall economic stability it ensured explain alone why France did not turn into a second-rank European country in spite of all the upheaval between 1789 and 1962.

Available online at Project Gutenberg Australia. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301...

During his ordeal, his neighbours had been thrilled, thinking that the husband would snuff it, the house would be sold and the wife in the gutter. They were all, moreover, excellent people, hearts of gold like any neighbours...

The best illustration of the French population’s mood during the war can be found in a series of short stories called Passe-Muraille, published in 1943 by author Marcel Aymé

"for the first time in over six hundred years, a European army had returned to the cradle of Western religion, and the Middle East was never going to be the same. “For me,” he later wrote, “[ it] was the supreme moment of the war.”

Final thoughts on translation from Tim Parks: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/03/...

"Glory, for the translator, is borrowed glory. There is no way around this. Translators are celebrated when they translate celebrated books. The best translations from the Italian I have seen in recent years are Geoffrey Brock’s rendering of Pavese’s collected poems, Disaffections..."

Fina thoughts on translation from Tim Parks: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/03/...

"Glory, for the translator, is borrowed glory. There is no way around this. Translators are celebrated when they translate celebrated books. The best translations from the Italian I have seen in recent years are Geoffrey Brock’s rendering of Pavese’s collected poems, Disaffections..."

The core problem, in Lawrence’s estimation, was that Great Britain had yet to grasp what was best for her, and he simply didn’t have time to explain.

Even a shrug, probably the most common of Gallic spasms, is more intricate and impressive when executed by a Provençal.

A reference to C.P. Snow's "Corridors of Power"!?

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.

He made an exception in the case of the Croix de Guerre; after the war, according to his brother, he found amusement in placing the medal around the neck of a friend’s dog and parading it through the streets of Oxford.

So inured would the architects of the carnage become to such statistics that at the launch of his 1916 Somme offensive, British general Douglas Haig could look over the first day’s casualty rolls—with fifty-eight thousand Allied soldiers dead or wounded, it remains the bloodiest single day in the history of the English-speaking world—and judge that the numbers “cannot be considered severe.”

Reviewed by Bryan Caplan here http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2..., one of the commenters is Tim Minto who is one of the "superforecasters" mentioned in the book.