The Joy of Curmudgeonry

It is no easy task to become virtuous, which is why in our age it is regarded as a vicious burden.

It is a happy thing for the utilitarians that immeasurable harm cannot be reckoned by the felicific calculus.

Naturally it is not only into Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other far-off lands that the United States stretches its sinister arm. Here is an exa...

It has been said that disgust arises in man from the consciousness of those things which remind him of his beasthood. That must explain my v...

“[G]o back far enough in history and no group outside Olduvai, in eastern Africa, can lay claim to being truly ‘native’.” [1]  How long wil...

“All manly peoples today have a bad name; the Prussians are the prototype. In the interregnum, however, it is not mothers but hermaphrodites...

“We have fought wars, indulged in regicide and had a glorious revolution in order to rid us of the religio-political tyranny of divine right...

“The amazing thing, in a world where a single mis-tap on Google shows us how vast, complex and miscellaneous is the human sexual instinct, i...

“Most hold it for a metamorphosis when they shed a false beard.” [“Die meisten halten es für eine Metamorphose, wenn sie einen falschen Bar...

“All we’ve got to do is wait a few generations. At which point there won’t be any ‘races’ to have any problems about.” [1] It is no shock ...

The common man is never so clever as the politician says and never so stupid as the politician believes.

“They spoke much of tolerance , because they needed the very same for themselves, but already at that time there was no-one more intolerant ...

“The suicide bombers’ targeting was deliberately provocative — and the Russian authorities’ response is equally predictable”. [1] If predic...

Highlights . On BBC Radio Four this week: Did immigration transform Britain by accident? [1] Continuing a series of programmes raising imp...

“Don’t believe the worst that you hear about South Africa,” reads a tagline to an article at Comment is Free . [1] Truly, so as not to let ...

There has been raised a horde of men, if so honorific a title may still be retained for them, who cry out “sky-fairy!” whenever they hear th...