But his heart had lit never to be quenched again, and one thing in him at last was real.
There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.
Against my will I have become normal. I cannot help it.
Oniton, like herself, was imperfect. Its apple-trees were stunted, its castle ruinous. It, too, had suffered in the border warfare between the Anglo-Saxon and the Kelt, between things as they are and as they ought to be.
The real thing’s money and all the rest is a dream.
He was a good average Englishman who had slipped.
She never saw it again. Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the sun retreats into the Welsh mountains, and the tower chimes: ‘See the Conquering Hero.’ But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind.
The love that Socrates bore Phaedo now lay within his reach, love passionate but temperate, such as only finer natures can understand, and he found in Maurice a nature that was not indeed fine, but charmingly willing.
While behavior is almost always motivated, it is also almost always biologically, culturally and situationally determined as well.
I am the means and not the end. I am the food and not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth.
Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or frightened.
One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!” bowing right and left. “Look at that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple soul!
When evil occurs, it expresses the whole of the universe. Similarly when good occurs.
Man is for war; woman for the recreation of the warrior.
The friendship between Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox, which was to develop so quickly and with such strange results, may perhaps have had its beginnings at Speyer, in the spring.
He hadn’t a God, he hadn’t a lover – the two usual incentives to virtue.
Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion.
He misliked the very word “interesting,” connoting it with wasted energy and even with morbidity. Hard facts were enough for him.
Well, it is odd and sad that our minds should be such seed-beds, and we without power to choose the seed. But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself.
Alec held out his hand. Maurice took it, and they knew at that moment the greatest triumph ordinary man can win.