If we start deciding, based on guesses or emotions, whether we will or won't participate in a business where we should have some long run edge, we're in trouble.
And angling too, that solitary vice, What Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.
In another situation, and in an active station in life, I should have been keenly occupied, and the founding of an order would have never come into my head.
Be who you are, said the Duchess to Alice, or, if you would like it put more simply, never try to be what you might have been or could have been other than what you should have been.
And angling too, that solitary vice, What Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.
An aimless life is always a troubled life. Every individual should have an aim. But do not forget that the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others. Whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realized unless you have realized perfection in yourself.
If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way.
It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.