“What if?’ history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day – including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery – believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.”

To disarm while being best armed, out of an elevation of sensibility-that is the means to real peace.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.

Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent.

I love telling stories, and am almost entirely unable to keep a secret.

Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational.

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

If you put into one room everyone who considered themselves a Nietzschean, there would be a bloodbath.

A seed of suspicion. A sprout of doubt. A sapling of worry. But what an oak of strength I’ve become.

Surprise your doubts with action.

If English is spoken in heaven. God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speechwriter. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book for internal memos.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.

A woman will doubt everything you say except it be compliments to herself.

There’s no doubt we were unworthy, but we were never worthless. Big difference.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

I let go of all fear and doubt, and life becomes simple and easy for me