Quotes

"What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love!" ~ Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens "Rich folks may ride on camels, but it an't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye. That is my comfort, and I hope I knows it." ~ Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens Out of natural courtesy he received, but did not appropriate. It was like a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers do not close. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville There is nothing namable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville "Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it." ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville "Politics is a dirty business for a gentleman." ~ The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington "I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization--that is, in spiritual civilization." ~ The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that life is everlasting movement. ~ Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington But her correctness was of the finer sort, and had no air of being studied or achieved; conduct would never offer her a problem to be settled from a book of rules, for the rules were so deep within her that she was unconscious of them. ~ Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington