The only way I can keep clear of force is by justice. Far from being willing to execute his enemies, a real king must be willing to execute his friends.
Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part.
Any one war seems rooted in its antecedents.
He had conquered murder only to be faced with war. There were no laws for that.
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be ret...
I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one's bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by...
My father always used to tell one of his dreams, because it somehow seemed of a piece with what was to follow. He believed that it was a consequence of the thing's presence in the next room. My father dreamed of blood. It was the vividness of the dre...
It was at the outskirts of the world that the Old Things accumulated, like driftwood round the edges of the sea. ("The Troll")
He did not himself believe in the supernatural, but the thing happened, and he proposed to tell it as simply as possible. It was stupid of him to say that it shook his faith in mundane affairs, for it was just as mundane as anything else. Indeed the ...
It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.
I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.
Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.
The increasingly cynical court thought Arthur, "hypocritical, as all decent men must be if you assume decency cannot exist.
Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.
Kings can only use their best tools.
The author says people are guilty of "wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.
We have invented a moral sense which is rotting now that we can't give it employment, and when a moral sense begins to rot, it is worse than when you had none. I suppose that all endeavors which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my precious ci...
People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honor.
These marvels were great and comfortable ones, but in the old England there was a greater still. The weather behaved itself. In the spring all the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang; in the summe...
