Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,--but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in.
Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.
I came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys. But I've been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.
The will to incessant creation is vulgar, betraying jealousy, envy, and ambition. Assuming that you are something, there is really nothing that you need to do-and yet you do a great deal. Above the "productive" man there is still a higher type.
The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.
Do not press an enemy at bay. Prince Fu Ch'ai said: "Wild beasts, when at bay, fight desperately. How much more is this true of men! If they know there is no alternative, they will fight to the death.
A man and a woman are new to one another throughout a life-time, in the rhythm of marriage that matches the rhythm of the year. Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the repulsion, always different, always new.
For as a surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomach brings, Or as tie heresies that men do leave Are hated most of those they did deceive, So thou, my surfeit and my heresy, Of all be hated, but the most of me!
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before; though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left God not for gods, they say, but for no gods; and this has never happened before. That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, and the money, and power, and what they call life, or race, or dialect.The church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms upturned in an age which advances progressively backwards?