The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet, my hand resting lightly on my ship’s rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted friend.
Our common fate fastens upon the women with a peculiar cruelty. It does not punish like a master, but inflicts lingering torment, as if to gratify a secret, unappeasable spite. One would think that, appointed to rule on earth, it seeks to revenge itself upon the beings that come nearest to rising above the trammels of earthly caution; for it is only women who manage to put at times into their love an element just palpable enough to give one a fright – an extra-terrestrial touch.
Anarchists, I suppose, have no families – not, at any rate, as we understand that social relation. Organization into families may answer to a need of human nature, but in the last instance it is based on law, and therefore must be something odious and impossible to an anarchist.
Wilful murder?′ says he in his quiet way. ‘What the deuce is that? What are you talking about? People do get killed sometimes when they get in one’s way, but that’s self-defence – you understand?
A gust of wind struck upon the nape of Jukes’ neck and next moment he felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stokehold ventilators hummed: in front of the six fire-doors two wild figures, stripped to the waist, staggered and stooped, wrestling with two shovels.
Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work, and Brown, as though he had been really great, had a satanic gift of finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims.
He was different; innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future.
Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags-rags that wouldfly off at the first good shake.
And this stillness of life did not the least resemble a peace.
Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia – and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk.
It is one of the most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness.
If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,” he said.
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
Our fatherland is suffering, not from the incursion of a score of alien tongues, but from our own acts, in that, in addition to the lawful administration, there has grown up a second administration possessed of infinitely greater powers than the system established by law.
It is only when our appointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception.
It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything.
A cloud of unreality hangs about men, events, discourses, purposes.
But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.
He was not occupied with the question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and joyous sensation.
The affair of the brig Bonito was bound to cause a sensation in Makassar, the prettiest, and perhaps the cleanest-looking of all the towns in the Islands; which however knows few occasions for excitement.