Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming an universal rule of action for all men.
The thought of my chief inspector reading The Waste Land filled me with pleasure. Suddenly he pushed a snapshot toward me.
Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories which resulted in no action.
Then the horrid fact was disclosed that the new head had a mania for general information. He had doubts about the utility of examinations on subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common sense.
He did not like old people, and resented it when he was invited to meet only persons of his own age, and the young he found vapid.
I never ceased to admire the way in which, while he bowed with courtly grace to those exalted personages, he managed to maintain the independent demeanor of the citizen of a country where all men are said to be born equal.
I found something wonderfully satisfying in the notion that you can attain Reality by knowledge. In later ages the sages of India in recognition of human infirmity admitted that salvation may be won by the way of love and the way of works, but they never denied that the noblest way, though the hardest, is the way of knowledge, for its instrument is the most precious faculty of man, his reason.
I always found Dickens very coarse. I don’t want to read about people who drop their aitches.
She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
The morning drew on and the sun touched the mist so that it shone whitely like the ghost of snow on a dying star.
His second novel was successful, but not so successful as to arouse the umbrageous susceptibilities of his competitors. In fact it confirmed them in their suspicions that he would never set the Thames on fire. He was a jolly good fellow; no side, or anything like that: they were quite content to give a leg up to a man who would never climb so high as to be an obstacle to themselves. I know some who smile bitterly now when they reflect on the mistake they made.
Deprecatingly, fully conscious of his audacity in asking so busy a man to waste his time on a neophyte’s puny effort, he begged for criticism and guidance.
She had a wild impulse to seize the stout, good-natured nun by the shoulders and shake her, crying: “Don’t you know that I’m a human being, unhappy and alone, and I want comfort and sympathy and encouragement; oh, can’t you turn a minute away from God and give me a little compassion; not the Christian compassion that you have for all suffering things, but just human compassion for me?
Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven’t any money.
All sensible people know that vanity is the most devastating, the most universal and the most ineradicable of the passions that afflict the soul of man, and it is only vanity that makes him deny its power. It is more consuming than love. With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thraldom of vanity.
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue;.
This did not surprise him, for he was beginning to realise that he was the creature of a God who appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers.
I guessed that he would have a passionate bedfellow that night, but would never know to what prickings of conscience he owed her ardor.
He could not bear the thought of discussing his situation, he could endure it only by determining resolutely not to think about it. He was afraid of his weakness if once he began to open his heart.
It was not of course a thing that the big-wigs cared to have anything to do with. Though ready enough to profit by the activities of obscure agents of whom they had never heard, they shut their eyes to dirty work so that they could put their clean hands on their hearts and congratulate themselves that they had never done anything that was unbecoming to men of honour.