I believe that what I do becomes part of me,” she said. “When I’m brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I’m cruel, or cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can’t respect myself. That’s the divine retribution I believe in.
Most people in Kingsbridge could talk only about agriculture and adultery, neither of which interested her.
She had always liked what Scarlett O’Hara said in Gone with the Wind: I’ll think about it tomorrow. Not anymore.
If earls’ daughters were allowed to marry whom they please, we’d all be ruled by strolling minstrels and dark-eyed outlaws.
You mean there isn’t an indisputable book that is the actual Word of God? Men argue about it and make a judgment?
With faultless good manners they would lead the world to destruction.
Never call a meeting until the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
Human beings have the capacity to rise above mundane circumstances and touch the eternal.
This was not a political party. It was an army.
My father taught us to learn as much as possible of any tongue we came across. He says it’s better than money in the bank.
I may yet go through anguish in hell for my sin. But if I had to live that time again I would do the same, to end Margery’s ordeal. I preferred to suffer myself than to know that her agony continued. Her well-being was more important to me than my own. I have learned, during the course of a long life, that that is the meaning of love.
She was twenty-six years old, her life was ruined, and it was her own fault.
She nodded. “They’re counting again in California. Almost a million people voted, and the difference is about five thousand.” “So much hangs on the decisions of a small number of poorly educated people.” “That’s democracy.” Gus smiled. “A terrible way to run a country, but every other system is worse.
Los manifestantes pueden causar un gran impacto, pero al final son los gobiernos los que remodelan el mundo.
Gwenda sighed. She did not know how to say what she felt. It was not just love. She thought about him all the time, and she did not know how she could live without him. She daydreamed about kidnapping him and locking him up in a hut deep in the forest so that he could never escape from her.
Mankind is fallible, so we should not rely on our own reasoning. We cannot hope to understand the world – all we can do is stand amazed at God’s creation. True knowledge comes only from revelation. We should not question received wisdom.
Just because someone asks you a question, don’t you think you have to answer.
Our great stumbling block, in our stride toward freedom, is not the White Citizens’ Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner. It’s the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who constantly says, like Bobby Kennedy: ‘I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot condone your methods.’ He paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.
If I’ve learned one thing in Spain, it’s that we have to fight the Communists just as hard as the Fascists. They’re both evil.
It seemed trivial. After the battlefield it was going to be difficult to take seriously some of the stuff people worried about in peacetime.