Chance quotes

My sympathies being equally divided and the two forces being equal it is perfectly obvious that nothing but mere chance influenced my decision in the end.

It is a mighty force that of mere chance; absolutely irresistible yet manifesting itself often in delicate forms such for instance as the charm, true or illusory, of a human being.

It is very difficult to put one’s finger on the imponderable, but I may venture to say that it is Flora de Barral who is really responsible for this novel which relates, in fact, the story of her life.

No doubt that by selecting a certain method and taking great pains the whole story might have been written out on a cigarette paper. For that matter, the whole history of mankind could be written thus if only approached with sufficient detachment.

The history of men on this earth since the beginning of ages may be resumed in one phrase of infinite poignancy: They were born, they suffered, they died.

… Yet it is a great tale! But in the infinitely minute stories about men and women it is my lot on earth to narrate I am not capable of such detachment.

“ ‘No, sir,’ I said and down went my heart sliding into my boots, just as the time had come to summon up all my cheek.

There’s nothing meaner in the world than a piece of impudence that isn’t carried off well.

For fear of appearing shamefaced I started about it so free and easy as almost to frighten myself. He listened for a while looking at my face with surprise and curiosity and then held up his hand.

“ ‘Oh, no, no,’ says he. ‘I guess it’s that shipment of explosives waiting down the river which has done most for you.

Forty tons of dynamite have been your best friend today, young man.

’

Such was hardly his intention. And even if it had been he would not have had the power. He was but a man, and the incapacity to achieve anything distinctly good or evil is inherent in our earthly condition.

Mediocrity is our mark.

And perhaps it’s just as well, since, for the most part, we cannot be certain of the effect of our actions.”

“A very good name,” said Marlow looking at him approvingly. “A sailor finds a deep feeling of security in the exercise of his calling.

The exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded.

”

“You are justified. There is very little intelligent design in the majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that.

Intelligence leads people astray as far as passion sometimes.

I know you are not a cynic.”

“After tea we would sit down to chess and then Fyne’s everlasting gravity became faintly tinged by an attenuated gleam of something inward which resembled sly satisfaction.

Of the divine frivolity of laughter he was only capable over a chessboard.

Certain positions of the game struck him as humorous, which nothing else on earth could do …”

One’s opinion may change; one’s tastes may alter—in fact they do. One’s very conception of virtue is at the mercy of some felicitous temptation which may be sprung on one any day. All these things are perpetually on the swing.

But a temperamental difference, temperament being immutable, is the parent of hate.

That’s why religious quarrels are the fiercest of all. My temperament, in matters pertaining to solid land, is the temperament of leisurely movement, of deliberate gait. And there was that little Fyne pounding along the road in a most offensive manner;

I don’t know why. Perhaps because of the pervading solemnity.

There’s nothing more solemn on earth than a dance of trained dogs.

“ ‘She has chosen to disappear. That’s all.’

“My appetite at breakfast was not affected by my ignorance of the facts, motives, events and conclusions.

I think that to understand everything is not good for the intellect.

A well-stocked intelligence weakens the impulse to action; an overstocked one leads gently to idiocy. But Mrs. Fyne’s individualist woman-doctrine, naively unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girlfriends’ heads!

“My appetite at breakfast was not affected by my ignorance of the facts, motives, events and conclusions. I think that to understand everything is not good for the intellect.

A well-stocked intelligence weakens the impulse to action; an overstocked one leads gently to idiocy.

But Mrs. Fyne’s individualist woman-doctrine, naively unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girlfriends’ heads!

Then one day as though a supernatural voice had whispered into his ear or some invisible fly had stung him, he put on his hat, went out into the street and began advertising. That’s absolutely all that there was to it.

He caught in the street the word of the time and harnessed it to his preposterous chariot.

“One remembers his first modest advertisements headed with the magic word Thrift, Thrift, Thrift, thrice repeated; promising ten percent on all deposits and giving the address of the Thrift and Independence Aid Association in Vauxhall Bridge Road. Apparently nothing more was necessary.

no, better say, this fund of knowledge which I had, or rather which existed, in me in regard to de Barral.

Information is something one goes out to seek and puts away when found as you might do a piece of lead: ponderous, useful, unvibrating, dull.

Whereas knowledge comes to one, this sort of knowledge, a chance acquisition preserving in its repose a fine resonant quality … But as such distinctions touch upon the transcendental I shall spare you the pain of listening to them. There are limits to my cruelty.

It is evident to me that Mrs. What’s-her-name would have had her atrocious way with very little trouble even if the excellent Fynes had been able to do something. She would simply have bullied de Barral in a lofty style.

There’s nothing more subservient than an arrogant man when his arrogance has once been broken in some particular instance.

“However there was no time and no necessity for anyone to do anything. The situation itself vanished in the financial crash as a building vanishes in an earthquake—here one moment and gone the next with only an ill-omened, slight, preliminary rumble.

But the very violence of the attack seemed to defeat its end by rendering the representative victim as it were insensible. The cause of this outrage naturally escaping the girl’s imagination her attitude was in effect that of dense, hopeless stupidity.

And it is a fact that the worst shocks of life are often received without outcries, without gestures, without a flow of tears and the convulsions of sobbing.

The insatiable governess missed these signs exceedingly. This pitiful stolidity was only a fresh provocation. Yet the poor girl was deadly pale.

“With that fatal diffidence in well doing, inherent in the present condition of humanity, the Fynes continued to watch at their window. ‘It’s always so difficult to know what to do for the best,’ Fyne assured me. It is.

Good intentions stand in their own way so much. Whereas if you want to do harm to anyone you needn’t hesitate.

You have only to go on. No one will reproach you with your mistakes or call you a confounded, clumsy meddler. The Fynes watched the door, the closed street door inimical somehow to their benevolent thoughts, the face of the house cruelly impenetrable.

‘That child is too emotional—much too emotional to be ever really sound!’ As if anyone not made of stone could be perfectly sound in this world. And then how sound? In what sense—to resist what? Force or corruption?

And even in the best armour of steel there are joints a treacherous stroke can always find if chance gives the opportunity.

“General considerations never had the power to trouble Mrs. Fyne much. The girl not being in a state to be questioned she waited by the bedside. Fyne had crossed over to the house, his scruples overcome by his anxiety to discover what really had happened.

Fyne sitting by patiently, her arms folded, yet inwardly moved by the riddle of that distress of which she could not guess the word, and saying to herself: ‘That child is too emotional—much too emotional to be ever really sound!’

As if anyone not made of stone could be perfectly sound in this world.

And then how sound? In what sense—to resist what? Force or corruption? And even in the best armour of steel there are joints a treacherous stroke can always find if chance gives the opportunity.

She was being helpful in her own way, with an extraordinary black bonnet on her head, a good mile off by that time, trying to discover in the village shops a piece of eatable cake.

The pluck of women! The optimism of the dear creatures!

“And she managed to find something which looked eatable. That’s all I know as I had no opportunity to observe the more intimate effects of that comestible. I myself never eat cake, and Mrs.

The women’s rougher, simpler, more upright judgment, embraces the whole truth, which their tact, their mistrust of masculine idealism, ever prevents them from speaking in its entirety.

And their tact is unerring. We could not stand women speaking the truth. We could not bear it.

It would cause infinite misery and bring about most awful disturbances in this rather mediocre, but still idealistic fool’s paradise in which each of us lives his own little life—the unit in the great sum of existence. And they know it. They are merciful.

which, I gratefully acknowledge, has saved me from one or two misadventures in my life either ridiculous or lamentable, I am not very certain which. It matters very little. Anyhow misadventures.

Observe that I say ‘femininity,’ a privilege⁠—not ‘feminism,’ an attitude.

I am not a feminist. It was Fyne who on certain solemn grounds had adopted that mental attitude; but it was enough to glance at him sitting on one side, to see that he was purely masculine to his fingertips, masculine solidly, densely, amusingly—hopelessly.

“I said loudly and distinctly: ‘I’ve come out to smoke a cigarette,’ and sat down near him on the little bench. Then lowering my voice: ‘

Tolerance is an extremely difficult virtue,

’ I said. ‘More difficult for some than heroism. More difficult than compassion.’

and though she had not much use for her brother, yet she did not like to see him annexed by another woman. By a chit of a girl. And such a girl, too.

Nothing is truer than that, in this world, the luckless have no right to their opportunities⁠—as if misfortune were a legal disqualification.

Fyne’s sentiments (as they naturally would be in a man) had more stability. A good deal of his sympathy survived. Indeed I heard him murmur ‘Ghastly nuisance,’ but I knew it was of the integrity of his domestic accord that he was thinking.

“ ‘No! What nonsense! It would be immoral. I may however tell you that if I had to make a choice

I would rather do something immoral than something cruel.

What I meant was that, not believing in the efficacy of the interference, the whole question is reduced to your consenting to do what your wife wishes you to do. That would be acting like a gentleman, surely.

There was something comic too in the whole situation, in the poor girl and myself waiting together on the broad pavement at a corner public-house for the issue of Fyne’s ridiculous mission.

But the comic when it is human becomes quickly painful.

Yes, she was infinitely anxious. And I was asking myself whether this poignant tension of her suspense depended—to put it plainly—on hunger or love.

The trouble was that I could not imagine anything about Flora de Barral and the brother of Mrs. Fyne. Or, if you like, I could imagine anything which comes practically to the same thing.

Darkness and chaos are first cousins.

I should have liked to ask the girl for a word which would give my imagination its line. But how was one to venture so far? I can be rough sometimes but I am not naturally impertinent.

“She did not answer me for a time, and as I waited I thought that there’s nothing like a confession to make one look mad; and that of all confessions a written one is the most detrimental all round.

Never confess! Never, never!

An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely. And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely.

and that of all confessions a written one is the most detrimental all round. Never confess! Never, never! An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely.

And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely.

The only thing which makes it supportable for a while is curiosity. You smile? Ah, but it is so, or else people would be sent to the rightabout at the second sentence. How many sympathetic souls can you reckon on in the world?

I didn’t study his case, but I had a glimpse of him the other day at a cricket match, with some women, having a good time. That seems a fairly reasonable attitude.

Considered as a sin, it is a case for repentance before the throne of a merciful God.

But I imagine that Flora de Barral’s religion under the care of the distinguished governess could have been nothing but outward formality.

It was a relief that I could see only their shabby hopeless backs. He was an awful ghost. But indeed to call him a ghost was only a refinement of polite speech, and a manner of concealing one’s terror of such things.

Prisons are wonderful contrivances. Shut⁠—open. Very neat.

Shut—open. And out comes some sort of corpse, to wander awfully in a world in which it has no possible connections and carrying with it the appalling tainted atmosphere of its silent abode. Marvellous arrangement.

“ ‘Certainly. You needn’t—unless you like,’ I said blankly. Little Fyne had never interested me so much since the beginning of the de Barral-Anthony affair when I first perceived possibilities in him.

The possibilities of dull men are exciting because when they happen they suggest legendary cases of ‘possession,’ not exactly by the devil but, anyhow, by a strange spirit.

“ ‘I told him it was a shame,’ said Fyne. ‘Even if the girl did make eyes at him—but I think with you that she did not. Yes!

I don’t mean to imply that he was a fool. Oh dear no! But he had no training in the usual conventions, and we must remember that he had no experience whatever of women. He could only have an ideal conception of his position.

An ideal is often but a flaming vision of reality.

“To him enters Fyne, wound up, if I may express myself so irreverently, wound up to a high pitch by his wife’s interpretation of the girl’s letter. He enters with his talk of meanness and cruelty, like a bucket of water on the flame.

I had taken the exact measure of the fellow’s utter worthlessness long before. He had never been for me a person of prestige and power, like that awful governess to Flora de Barral. See the might of suggestion?

We live at the mercy of a malevolent word.

A sound, a mere disturbance of the air, sinks into our very soul sometimes. Flora de Barral had been more astounded than convinced by the first impetuosity of Roderick Anthony.

“The surprise, it is easy to understand, would arise from the inability to interpret aright the signs which experience (a thing mysterious in itself) makes to our understanding and emotions. For it is never more than that.

Our experience never gets into our blood and bones. It always remains outside of us.

That’s why we look with wonder at the past.

Anthony before her marriage, that, to a certain extent, I was her confidant … For you can’t deny that to a certain extent … Well let us say that I had a look in …

A young girl, you know, is something like a temple.

You pass by and wonder what mysterious rites are going on in there, what prayers, what visions? The privileged men, the lover, the husband, who are given the key of the sanctuary do not always know how to use it.

There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious compassion. However, the Anthonys were free from all demoralizing influences.

At sea, you know, there is no gallery.

You hear no tormenting echoes of your own littleness there, where either a great elemental voice roars defiantly under the sky or else an elemental silence seems to be part of the infinite stillness of the universe.

And indeed to be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts—all these things which stand in the way of achievement.

I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

“And Anthony was extremely careful in preparing for himself and for the luckless Flora, an impossible existence. He went about it with no more tremors than if he had been stuffed with rags or made of iron instead of flesh and blood.

“And these things which she could tell herself with a clear conscience served her better than the passionate obstinacy of purpose could serve Roderick Anthony. She was much more sure of herself than he was.

Such are the advantages of mere rectitude over the most exalted generosity.

“And so they went out to get married, the people of the house where she lodged having no suspicion of anything of the sort.

The generosity of Roderick Anthony—the son of the poet—affected the ex-financier de Barral in a manner which must have brought home to Flora de Barral the extreme arduousness of the business of being a woman.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.

This man—the man inside the cab—cast oft his stiff placidity and behaved like an animal. I don’t mean it in an offensive sense. What he did was to give way to an instinctive panic.

It could not possibly be a just notion. The cab stopped alongside the ship and they got out in the manner described by the sensitive Franklin. I don’t know if they suspected each other’s sanity at the end of that drive. But that is possible.

We all seem a little mad to each other; an excellent arrangement for the bulk of humanity which finds in it an easy motive of forgiveness.

Flora crossed the quarterdeck with a rapidity born of apprehension. It had grown unbearable. She wanted this business over. She was thankful on looking back to see he was following her.

… the man who had persisted in throwing millions of other people’s thrift into the Lone Valley Railway, the Labrador Docks, the Spotted Leopard Copper Mine, and other grotesque speculations exposed during the famous de Barral trial, amongst murmurs of astonishment mingled with bursts of laughter.

For it is in the Courts of Law that Comedy finds its last refuge in our deadly serious world.

As to tears and lamentations, these were not heard in the august precincts of comedy, because they were indulged in privately in several thousand homes, where, with a fine dramatic effect, hunger had taken the place of Thrift.

It makes one pause. A woman may be a fool, a sleepy fool, an agitated fool, a too awfully noxious fool, and she may even be simply stupid. But she is never dense. She’s never made of wood through and through as some men are.

There is in woman always, somewhere, a spring.

Whatever men don’t know about women (and it may be a lot or it may be very little) men and even fathers do know that much. And that is why so many men are afraid of them.

“ ‘Of course not,’ sounded his subdued tone. And he left her, gliding away with his walk which Mr. Powell described to me as being as level and wary as his voice.

He walked as if he were carrying a glass full of water on his head.

“Flora naturally said nothing to Anthony of that edifying conversation. His generosity might have taken alarm at it and she did not want to be left behind to manage her father alone. And moreover she was too honest. She would be honest at whatever cost.

“

It happens to the most resolute of men to find himself at grips not only with unknown forces, but with a well-known force the real might of which he had not understood.

Anthony had discovered that he was not the proud master but the chafing captive of his generosity. It rose in front of him like a wall which his respect for himself forbade him to scale. He said to himself:

“

A man who has had his way is seldom happy, for generally he finds that the way does not lead very far on this earth of desires which can never be fully satisfied.

Anthony had entered with extreme precipitation the enchanted gardens of Armida saying to himself ‘At last!’ As to Armida, herself, he was not going to offer her any violence. But now he had discovered that all the enchantment was in Armida herself, in Armida’s smiles.

He went down on the main deck. Without taking the mate’s jeremiads seriously he put them beside the words of Mr. Smith. He had grown already attached to Captain Anthony. There was something not only attractive but compelling in the man.

Only it is very difficult for youth to believe in the menace of death.

Not in the fact itself, but in its proximity to a breathing, moving, talking, superior human being, showing no sign of disease. And Mr. Powell thought that this talk was all nonsense. But his curiosity was awakened.

“Powell looked at the grotesque Franklin with awakened interest and with that half-amused sympathy with which we receive unprovoked confidences from men with whom we have no sort of affinity. And at the same time he began to look upon him more seriously.

Experience has its prestige.

And the mate continued:

“ ‘

Funny thing shame is.

I had been behaving badly and aware of it in a way, but I didn’t feel really ashamed till the fright of being found out in my honourable occupation drove me from it.

“

Each situation created either by folly or wisdom has its psychological moment.

The behaviour of young Powell with its mixture of boyish impulses combined with instinctive prudence, had not created it—I can’t say that—but had discovered it to the very people involved. What would have happened if he had made a noise about his discovery?