The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by theopulent, can be enjoyed by all.
LADY BRACKNELL Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?
If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning!
Men spend their life down here in the worship of petty (or mean) interests and the search of perishable things, and with that ("et avec cela", Fr.) they pretend to perpetuate for all eternity their self ("moi", Fr.) so hardly worthy ("digne", Fr.) of it.
Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe ? Another act of willing?
In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose.
A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man.
Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it and made fit for God.