7 Quotes & Sayings By Adam Nicolson

Adam Nicolson is the author of the memoir A History of Mirrors, which was shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Award, and The Last Place on Earth, which won the 2014 Costa Biography Award. He has written for the Times Literary Supplement, Granta, GQ, Harper's Magazine, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent Magazine, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph Magazine, History Review, The Spectator and others. His writing has appeared in publications including New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire and Vanity Fair. He lives in London with his wife and two sons.

1
At that level through out the 18th century, another vision of admirable behavior persisted. The mob did not want the smooth conformable man, the slick hypocrite who could so politely maneuver his way into the rewards of high politics and high society. They wanted his very opposite, the clever thief. The man who thrived not by using the well oiled wheels of society but by opposing them and cheating them; by attending to the well-being of his own heroic self. . Adam Nicolson
2
We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides. Adam Nicolson
3
The place has entered me...it has coloured my life like a stain. Adam Nicolson
4
T's [King James Bible] subject is majesty, not tyranny, and it's political purpose was unifying and enfolding, to elide the kingliness of God with the godliness of kings, to make royal power and divine glory into one invisible garment which could be wrapped around the nation as a whole. Adam Nicolson
5
Very occasionally, a simplified form of communion and of adult baptism for new members of the church would be enacted but no Separatist was ever married in church, because there is no hint of a marriage ceremony in scripture and the primitive church had not considered marriage a sacrament before AD 537. Adam Nicolson
6
The 19th century had chosen only to remember the happy warrior. The 20th century only the blood come gargling. Both are essential to any understanding of Trafalgar. Adam Nicolson