Then the vision of an enormous town presented itself, of a monstrous town more populous than some continents and in its man-mad might as if indifferent to heaven’s frowns and smiles; a cruel devourer of the world’s light. There was room enough there to place any story, depth enough there for any passion, variety enough there for any setting, darkness enough there to bury five millions of lives.
How can we fight the French, Prince?” said Count Rostopchin. “Can we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities?
There’s no suspicion from prejudice.
Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs.
He attended some lectures somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match for him.
There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.
I saw the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot lust...
History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads.
What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.
The work is not dear to me, but I’m glad for that which is in the work – a chance to find yourself.
The Emperor proposes to give all commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other.
No fear could match the hunger, no patience can exhaust it, repulsion just doesn’t exist where there is hunger.
Their character is built upon conventional morality. It leans on the social order. Mine stands free from everything artificial. Le They are bound in all sorts of conventions. They depend on life, which, in this connexion, is a historical fact surrounded by all sorts of restraints and considerations, a complex, organized fact open to attack at every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows no restraints and cannot be attached. My superiority is evident.
Her son’s growth toward manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way.
Even the extremely sadness can in the end give itself a break in violence.
Art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect.
The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea.
He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them – the ship; and so is their country – the sea.
In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.
I wouldn’t have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time.