'and we to bed - it being one of the times of my life wherein I was the fullest of true sense of joy.'

10th Sept 1665 (at the height of the Plague Year)

The author quotes a patient who says, 'I'm scared to lose what I don't have.'

Heraclitus said that everything is fire. There are Buddhists who say that everything is on fire.

Louis XVI was mending locks at Versailles when the revolutionaries arrived.

Henry James on seeing a Punch and Judy show: 'A remarkable economy of means, and of effect.'