The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.
The author says people are guilty of wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.
So Merlyn sent you to me, said the badger, to finish your education. Well, I can only teach you two things -- to dig, and love your home. These are the true end of philosophy.
It is good to put your life in other people's hands.
If you achieve perfection, you die.
He was feeling a new heresy coming over him, possibly as a result of the spirits, and it had something to do about the celibacy of the clergy. He had one already about the shape of his tonsure and the...
He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.
He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur...
When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?
The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in you anatomies, you may lie...
Nobody can be too careful about their habits of speech.
Don't kill me,' said the knight. 'I yield. I yield. You can't kill a man at mercy.'Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were going back from his own soul. He felt in his h...
Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.
The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.
Thank God for the aged And for age itself, and illness and the grave. When we are old and ill, and particularly in the coffin, It is no trouble to behave.
One has to live one's knowledge
It is generally the trustful and optimistic people who can afford to retreat. The loveless and faithless ones are compelled by their pessimism to attack.
I have been thinking, said Arthur, about Might and Right. I don’t think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them.
He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known wo...
But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital...