A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God's truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did what pleased him alone? Who would plough the fields and ...
Need we go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very much what everybody always says, and although I remember her as speaking golden words, I cannot recall precisely anything she said. If love is to be w...
It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my own book yet! I always found myself alone when we we...
I endured all our hardships as if they had been luxuries: I made light of scurvy, banqueted off train-oil, and met that cold for which there is no language framed, and which might be a new element; or which, rather, had seemed in that long night like...
The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this p...
I glimpsed the man's face with the shine of death on it. They laid him down there in the open. They had brought him there to be close to his death, I understood this also at the same moment. For who would wish to see a companion gasp his last on a jo...
Fanny spoke her feelings. "Here's harmony!" said she; "here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if ...
The ideological premise, however, "can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way t...
Wait and wonder when we will return, mouse - then you will really see what a battle is like." Simeon turned his head in the direction of Graypatch's voice. "Alas, I will never see anything for I am blind; but I can sense a lot. I can feel you are bot...
I promised I'd save him, take him home! I promised him!" . . . Thomas hugged Chuck to his chest, squeezed him as tightly as possible, as if that could somehow bring him back, or show thanks for saving his life, for being his friend when no one else w...
...The world's benefactor has no choice; he is the surgeon who wields the healing scalpel. He does not want the violence, but the reality (which he has invented) drives him to use violence, in a way, against his will. Throwing a bomb into a crowded d...
WORTH IT? It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate...
know a lot of people who hide out in fantasy because reality is too hard to cope with [...] Fantasy isn't about escape; it's a survival mechanism. It's a way to deal with things that are so much bigger than you are. So I think fantasy is special, som...
Something about this made Reynie uneasy. Had he done so badly? Was this meant to test his courage? He did as he was told, closing his eyes and bracing himself as best he could. "Why are you flinching?" the pencil woman asked. "I don't know. I thought...
It is just the old way--that of obedience. If you have ever seen the Lord, if only from afar--if you have any vaguest suspicion that the Jew Jesus, who professed to have come from God, was a better man, a different man--one of your first duties must ...
I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it care...
I do believe that when a man confesses to his neighbor and says he's sorry, he thinks more of him than he did before. You see, we all know we have done wrong, but we haven't usually confessed it. And it's a funny thing, but when the time comes when t...
Si uno quiere descubrir cualidades realmente excepcionales en el carácter de un ser humano, debe tener el tiempo o la oportunidad de observar su comportamiento durante varios años. Si este comportamiento no es egoísta, si está presidido por una g...
In this, then, lies their power of understanding--understanding, without words, what is authentic or inauthentic. Thus it was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang fal...
For 'wellness', naturally is no cause of complaint--people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill--not well. Unless, as George Eliot does, they have some intimation of 'wrongness' or dan...
[I]f the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people are profoundly confused abou...
