He was a born columnist – keen to tell people what to think, and very good at expressing it in 800 words"

--- George Brock, former managing editor at The Times, about Michael Gove, in "A Leaver's lesson in political justice" by Henry Mance, The Financial Times, 2/3 July 2016

[the bed where] we forget, for one half of our life's duration, the sorrows of the other half

---  Xavier de Maistre, "Voyage Around My Room" (1794)

In context:

Heading north from my armchair, we discover my bed, which sits at the back of the room and creates a most agreeable perspective: it is most  felicitously situated, receiving the morning sun's first rays as they shine  through my curtains. . . . ls there any theater that better quickens the imagination, that more effectively awakens thoughts of tenderness, than  the piece of furniture in which I sometimes find oblivion? . . . And it is in this cradle of delight that we forget, for one half of our life's duration, the sorrows of the other  half.—Yet what a host of thoughts both pleasant and sad rush all at once  into my brain! What a bewildering mix of frightful and delightful situations! A bed witnesses our birth and it witnesses our death: it is the ever-changing theater where the human species enacts, by turns, . . .