It was said that pilgrims should not spend too much time planning their journey, for they might learn of so many hazards that they would decide not to go.
Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best.
She had believed that love was something she could bestow upon whomever she liked, and that her main responsibility was to choose cleverly.
You didn’t ask for a priest.” “Whether I’ve been good or bad, I don’t think God will be fooled by a last-minute change of heart.
When you’re about to be turned down, go for a postponement.
Don’t worry. We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged.” She.
A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It’s like losing a finger. It’s worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.
Lenin’s idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.
It was unladylike even to know the name of your lawyer, let alone to understand your rights under the law. No wonder women were mercilessly exploited.
He wondered if he really was capable of it. Then he thought what a thrill it would be to create something from nothing; to see, one day in the future, a new church here where now there was nothing but rubble, and to say: I made this.
If you don’t take an interest, then what happens is your fault.
This was her destiny, and it was a fit and proper one. She was not unwilling, but she knew this was a fateful moment, and she had a sense of doors closing behind her and the path of her life being fixed irrevocably.
When you were trying to enforce law and order, it was difficult to explain that the rules did not actually apply to you personally.
If you want to change the world, then foreign relations is the field in which you can do the most good – or evil.
He forced himself to take a single step forward; and once he had done that the second was a little less difficult, and the third was almost easy.
Monika answered for her father. Giving Walter a conspiratorial grin, she said: “Daddy used to say that if the tsar had been born to a different station in life, he might, with an effort, have become a competent postman.
All men make mistakes,’ said the ancient Greek Sophocles. ‘But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.
The truth is not arrived at by majority vote.
Protestors can have a big impact, but in the end it’s governments that reshape the world.
Some men craved deference; others craved wine, or the bodies of beautiful women, or the monastic life of order and obedience. What did Ned crave? The answer came into his mind with a speed and effortlessness that took him by surprise: justice.