They demanded tolerance, and the right to worship as they wished, but they were never satisfied with that, he thought with exasperation. They believed their rivals were not just mistaken but evil. Catholic practices – the ways in which Europeans had worshipped for hundreds of years – were blasphemous, they said, and must be abolished. They did not practice the tolerance they preached.
Because all this stuff about military targets is absolute rubbish. There’s no point in bombing German factories, because they just rebuild them. So we’re targeting large areas of dense working-class housing. They can’t replace the workers so fast.” Lowther looked shocked. “That would mean it’s our policy to kill civilians.
The worst negotiator in the world is a man who believes he’s clever.
I’ve met the people who run Alabama. Believe me, they’re not that smart.
There were more police than Fascists. From inside one of the buses, a uniformed constable gave him the Hitler salute. Lloyd was dismayed. If all these policemen sided with the Fascists, how could the counterdemonstrators resist them?
People know the difference between right and wrong – and if they don’t, that’s what priests are for.
What should we do?” “If you want to live, you should go to church, confess your sins, pray, and lead a better life.
But everyone had to die, and Father had given his life for the sake of a better world. If more Germans had had his courage the Nazis would not have triumphed. She wanted to do all the things he had done: to raise her children well, to make a difference to her country’s politics, to love and be loved. Most of all, when she died, she wanted her children to be able to say, as she said of her father, that her life had meant something, and that the world was a better place for it.
The only book Papa had ever read, apart from the Bible, was Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He believed that the even greater British Empire would go the same way unless noblemen fought to preserve its institutions, especially the Royal Navy, the Church of England, and the Conservative Party. He was right, Fitz had no doubt.
We move by inches, not miles,’ said Gus Dewar with a smile. ‘That’s politics.
A Woodrow Wilson no lo amedrentaba la guerra. Su obra de teatro favorita era Enrique V, de Shakespeare, y le gustaba la cita: “Si es pecado codiciar el honor, soy el mayor de todos los pecadores”.
The people of the East End did not want to overthrow the British government. On the contrary, they were deeply attached to their elections and their borough councils and their Houses of Parliament. They liked their system of government so much that they were determined to defend it against Fascism even if it would not defend itself.
Monks committed all the same sins that ordinary people did. He had just been shocked by the woman’s shamelessness. The sight of her nakedness remained with him, the way the hot heart of a candle flame, stared at for a few moments, would burn on behind closed eyelids.
They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions. Georgetown was only a few minutes.
The simple idea that people should be allowed to worship as they wished caused more suffering than the ten plagues of Egypt.
You will make love to a fat Prussian general who will call you his Liebling.
The heart is that kind of map. The self is in the middle and everything else is out of proportion. You draw the friends of your youth large, then later it’s impossible to rescale them when other more important people need to be added. Anyone who has done you wrong is shown too big, and so is anyone you loved.
Her Protestant pastor had been sympathetic, until the Gestapo terrified him into silence. Perhaps the same would happen again. But she did not know what else to do. Heinrich took.
Texaco’s chairman, the Hitler-admiring Torkild Rieber, was using the company’s tankers to smuggle oil to the rebels in defiance of a specific request from President Roosevelt.
Growing up is learning to deceive.