I have a huge, huge collection of quotations collected over almost three decades – I possess a copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations – but the most interesting are those I have jotted down over the years. I’ve managed to fill four notebooks and my guess is that the count runs into several thousands. My son says that it is a terrible method of recording anything, especially now, in the age of computers. He has been pushing me to input them on a PC. He even started a blog, publishing quotes from my collection that do not come up on Google search – rarequotes.wordpress - but it is a work in progress – getting along in fits and starts.

I often read through my collection (it’s almost scripture to me!). Recently I was struck by a common category several seemed to fall in. I got thinking – and scribbling – and here is the end result…