South Wind quotes

There was nothing he despised more than inefficiency. Well or ill, he always insisted on getting through his tasks in a businesslike fashion. That was the way to live, he used to say. Get through with it.

Be perfect of your kind, whatever that kind may be.

Hence his sneaking fondness for the natives—they were such fine, healthy animals.

Fine, healthy animals; perfect of their kind! Africa liked them to "get through with it" according to their own lights.

But there was evidently a little touch of spitefulness and malice about Africa; something almost human.

For when white people try to get through with it after their particular fashion, she makes hay of their livers or something. That is what had happened to Thomas Heard, D.D., Bishop of Bampopo.

The comely outlines were barely suggested through a veil of fog. An air of irreality hung about the place. Could this be an island? A veritable island of rocks and vineyards and houses—this pallid apparition?

It looked like some snowy sea-bird resting upon the waves; a sea-bird or a cloud; one of those lonely clouds that stray from their fellows and drift about in wayward fashion at the bidding of every breeze.

All the better-class natives had disappeared below save an unusually fat young priest with a face like a full moon, who pretended to be immersed in his breviary but was looking out of the corner of his eye all the time at a pretty peasant …

"They do suffer. And they get used to it too. I often wonder whether they are as susceptible to pain and discomfort as the rich with their finer nervous structure. Who can say?

Animals also have their sufferings, but they are not encouraged to tell us about them. Perhaps that is why God made them dumb.

Zola, in one of his novels, speaks of a sea-sick donkey."

As usual at this hour the market-place was crowded with folks. It was a gay throng. Priests and curly-haired children, farmers, fishermen, citizens, a municipal policeman or two, brightly dressed women of all ages, foreigners in abundance—they moved up and down, talking, laughing, gesticulating.

Nobody had anything particular to do; such was the rule.

The Russian sect was well represented. They were religious enthusiasts, ever increasing in numbers and led by their Master, the divinely inspired Bazhakuloff, who was then living in almost complete seclusion on the island.

… eloquence made converts everywhere, greatly to the annoyance of the parroco, the parish priest, who was doubtless sounder on the Trinity but a shocking bad orator and altogether deficient in humanity, and who nearly had a fit, they said, when the other was created Monsignor.

Don Francesco was a fisher of men, and of women.

He fished AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, and for the fun of the thing. It was his way of taking exercise, he once confessed to his friend Keith; he was too fat to run about like other people—he could only talk.

"To take tea with the Duchess is an experience, a revelation," said Don Francesco in judicial tones. "I have enjoyed that meal in various parts of the world, but nobody can manage it like she can. She has the true gift.

You will make tea for us in Paradise, dear lady.

As to luncheon, let me tell you in confidence, Mr. Heard, that my friend Keith, whom you will meet sooner or later, has a most remarkable chef. What that man of Keith's cannot cook is not worth eating."

"Portraiture of characters and events should take the form of one gentleman conversing with another, in the easy tone of good society.

The author who sets out to address a crowd defeats his own object; he eliminates the essence of good writing—frankness.

You cannot be frank with men of low condition. You must presuppose a refined and congenial listener, a man or woman whom you would not hesitate to take by the hand and lead into the circle of your own personal friends.

The poet may be an inspired illiterate, the romance-writer an uninspired hack. Under no circumstances can either of them be accused of wronging or deceiving the public, however incongruous their efforts. They write well or badly, and there the matter ends.

The historian, who fails in his duty, deceives the reader and wrongs the dead.

A man weighted with such responsibilities is deserving of an audience more than usually select—an audience of his equals, men of the world. No vulgarian can be admitted to share those confidences….

Later on, at the University, he used the English language for the sake of convenience—in order to make himself understood by Dons and Heads of Colleges.

His thoughts, his dreams, were in Latin.

Such a man, arriving almost penniless on Nepenthe, might have passed a torpid month or two, then drifted into the Club-set and gone to the dogs altogether. Latin saved him. He took to studying those earlier local writers who often composed in that tongue.

He shrank from the idea. He closed up like a flower in the chill of night-fall. He was not going to put himself under obligations to anybody. He would keep his sense of personal independence, even if it entailed the sacrifice of a life's ambition.

Owe no man anything!

The words rang in his ears. They were his father's words. Owe no man anything! They were that gentleman's definition of a gentleman—a definition which was cordially approved by every other gentleman who, like Mr. Eames junior, happened to hold analogous views.

"I thought so.

A man's best clock is his stomach.

We have only a few hundred yards to go. Hot, isn't it? This infernal south wind…."

And his sleepless nights were bad for his subjects. They generally hid in caves till the fountains were reported to be in working order again. That is the way to run an island, Mr. Heard.

One must be a stylist.

"

"

I have not been bored since I was twenty.

"

As regards the first, we cannot expect a school to purvey more than a grip of general principles. Even that is seldom given. The second should enable a man to extract as much happiness as possible out of his spare time.

The secret of happiness is curiosity.

Now curiosity is not only not roused; it is repressed. You will say there is not time for everything. But how much time is wasted! Mathematics….

That is why I cannot endure England for long. The country is full of half-tones, not only in nature. Because a thing seems good, there must be some bad in it. It seems bad to us—therefore it must be good for us. Bedlamites!

I like clean values. They make for clean thinking.

This is the only day in the year," he went on, "when you will see the population abroad at this hour. The streets are generally quite empty. It is the only day when I would forgo my afternoon nap on Nepenthe."

No wonder. Because there was nothing whatever in their Bible, the GOLDEN BOOK of the divinely inspired Bazhakuloff, to prohibit or even limit the consumption of strong waters. In the matter of dietary he had only bidden them refrain from the flesh of warm-blooded beasts.

Mr. Parker was always thinking things over and coming to the wrong conclusion.

It was foolish of him.

She would have to bide her time because Freddy, of whom she had made an exhaustive study, was a wobbler, and worse than a wobbler. He was stubborn at the wrong season and difficult to manage. He needed careful motherly guidance.

All fools, she reflected, were subject to meteoric gleams of common sense.

He was no exception to that rule. But whereas they received such flashes with thankfulness, he persisted in regarding them as inspirations of the devil. That was the tragedy of Freddy Parker. It made him into something quinessential—a kind of super-fool….

He likes to be cosy and familiar and exclusive; he has no sense for broad social functions. There is something of the cave-dweller in every Englishman. He may say what he likes, but the humble cottage will always remain his dream.

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

This country is pastoral. That is why our advertisements are so apt to portray commercial conditions—enormous factories and engines and chimneys; we are dissatisfied with our agricultural state. The Frenchman's aspiration is woman; Paris hoardings will tell you that.

They falsify your cosmic values. Try to be more of an animal. Try to extract pleasure from more obvious sources. Lie fallow for a while. Forget all these things. Go out into the midday glare. Sit among rocks and by the sea.

Have a look at the sun and stars for a change; they are just as impressive as Donatello.

Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury? Climb down, one night of full moon, all alone, and rest at its entrance. Familiarize yourself with elemental things. The whole earth reeks of humanity and its works.

Have a look at the sun and stars for a change; they are just as impressive as Donatello. Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury? Climb down, one night of full moon, all alone, and rest at its entrance. Familiarize yourself with elemental things.

The whole earth reeks of humanity and its works.

One has to be old and tough to appraise them at their true worth. Tell people to go to Hell, Denis, with their altar-pieces and museums and clock-towers and funny little art-galleries."

The whole earth reeks of humanity and its works. One has to be old and tough to appraise them at their true worth. Tell people to go to Hell, Denis, with their altar-pieces and museums and clock-towers and funny little art-galleries."

Everybody is always giving me advice, thought Denis. And the worst of it is, it's often sound.

"If, after that lecture, you still have some crotchety appreciation left for the works of man, you may be interested, when next you visit the Old Town, to look at some busts and other curiosities of mine.

"You have nothing but nice people round you, Duchess. Why should you want to read about them?

There is so much goodness in real life. Do let us keep it out of our books.

"

Far from it! In sharpening men's lust for gold, it has demarcated our frontiers with a bitterness hitherto unknown. The world of thought has not expanded; it has contracted and grown provincial. Men have lost sight of distant horizons.

Nobody writes for humanity, for civilization; they write for their country, their sect; to amuse their friends or annoy their enemies.

Pliny or Linneus or Humboldt—they sat on mountain-tops; they surveyed the landscape at their feet, and if some little valley lay shrouded in mist, the main outlines of the land yet lay clearly distended before them.

Then he surveyed his work, and saw that it was good. He had created a gem.

The Old Town was a symphony in emerald and coral.

So it remained. The inhabitants grew to be proud of their rosy citadel; it was an unwritten law among them that every new house should adapt itself to this tone.

apples and plum-trees, nodding drowsily over walls, littered the streets with snowy blossoms or fallen leaves. Commercial life was extinct. The few remaining shopkeepers wore an air of slumberous benevolence.

The very stones suggested peace.

A mellow and aristocratic flavour clung to those pink dwellings that nestled, world—forgotten, in a green content….

Like Thomas, the doubting apostle, you must touch with your hands. And even then you are not wholly convinced. To me, who knows the capacity of human bone and muscle, these men are a daily miracle. They mock my notions of what is permissible.

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality!

The industry is decaying," he added, "but I hope it will outlive my time."

That is why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it. Yet nobody would be an Eskimo if he had a chance of bettering his condition.

By all means let us take life seriously. But let us be serious about things that matter.

"

We have only a certain amount of energy at our disposal. It is not seemly to consume every ounce of it in a contest with brute nature. Man is made for better things.

Whatever fails to elevate the mind is not truly profitable.

Tell me, sir, how shall the mind be elevated if the body be exhausted with material preoccupations? Consider the complex conditions under which a Northern family is obliged to live.

That was his old College attitude. Imperceptibly his outlook had shifted since then. Something had been stirring within him; new points of view had floated into his ken. He was no longer so sure about things.

The structure of his mind had lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations.

China had taught him that men can be happy and virtuous while lacking, and even scorning the first of these twin blessings.

epigrams died, still-born, on his lips. He lost his sense of humour; grew mirthless, fretful, self-conscious. He suddenly realized the existence of a world beyond his college walls; it made him feel like a hot-house flower exposed to the blustering winds of March.

Life was no longer a hurdle in a steeple-chase to be taken at a gallop; it was a tangle of beastly facts that stared you in the face and refused to get out of the way.

With growing years, during vacation, he came in contact with a new set of people; men who smiled indulgently at mention of all he held most sacred—art, classics, literature;

Is that your way of mortifying the flesh? Got a soul, eh? Get rid of it.

The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began.

You're just like a man I used to know at Newcastle. You can't think what an ass he was. A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock of prize sheep.

A man needn't handle everything dirty in order to be doubly sure about it. If you tell me that a dead donkey smells bad, I'm quite prepared to believe you without poking my nose into it.

Chastity is a dead donkey. No beating will bring it to life again.

Who killed it? The experience of every sane man and woman on earth. It's decayed; it ought to be buried. You ask me to give it a trial. Perhaps I will, when I'm in the same mellow condition myself. Everything in its proper season.

It's decayed; it ought to be buried. You ask me to give it a trial. Perhaps I will, when I'm in the same mellow condition myself. Everything in its proper season. Don't let us reverse the natural order of things.

When we cease to practise, then is the time to preach.

A fellow of your size! And with your good looks, too. Who knows how many golden opportunities you've missed. Try to make up for lost time, Phipps. Get rid of conventional notions, if you value your health."

"

Conscience, my dear fellow, is a good servant but a bad master.

Your sentiments are English. They will never do in a country where the personal element still counts for something."

"

The philosopher can only live under a venal government.

"

"

Poverty is like rain. It drops down ceaselessly, disintegrating the finer tissues of a man, his recent, delicate adjustments, and leaving nothing but the bleak and gaunt framework.

A poor man is a wintry tree—alive, but stripped of its shining splendour. He is always denying himself this or that. One by one, his humane instincts, his elegant desires, are starved away by stress of circumstances.

"Poverty is like rain. It drops down ceaselessly, disintegrating the finer tissues of a man, his recent, delicate adjustments, and leaving nothing but the bleak and gaunt framework.

A poor man is a wintry tree—alive, but stripped of its shining splendour.

He is always denying himself this or that. One by one, his humane instincts, his elegant desires, are starved away by stress of circumstances. The charming diversity of life ceases to have any meaning for him.

"

Have you ever seen a gentleman, except on a tailor's fashion-plate?

"

"I will tell you what is unhealthy, Eames. Your own state of mind. You derive a morbid pleasure from denying yourself the common emoluments of life. It's a form of self-indulgence.

I wish you would open your windows and let the sun in. You are living by candlelight.

If you analysed yourself closely—"

"I am glad you don't always succeed," Keith would reply, with a horrible accent on the word "always." "

Heaven shield me from a clean-minded man!

"

"

To want a wife, Duchess, is better than to need one. Especially if it happens to be only your neighbour's.

"

It is like a passionate lover knocking to gain an entrance into our hearts. And he succeeds. He breaks down the barrier by the oldest and best of lovers' expedients—sheer reiteration of monotony.

A lover who reasons is no lover.

"

The truth is that a man, of whom we say this, is born at exactly the right moment; that those with whose customs and aspirations he seems to be in discord have urgent need of him at that particular time.

No great man is ever born too soon or too late.

When we say that the time is not ripe for this or that celebrity, we confess by implication that this very man, and no other, is required. Was Giordano Bruno, or Edgar Poe, born out of time?

Was Giordano Bruno, or Edgar Poe, born out of time? Surely no generation needed them more imperiously than their own.

Only fools are born out of time.

And yet—no; not even they. For where should we be without them?"

For the Parthenon creators he had no sure norm. The standards were not yet evolved. Pheidias was a talented fellow-citizen—a hewer in stone by profession: what could he know of the relations of Pheidias to posterity?

Great things can only be seen at a proper distance.

Pheidias, to him, may have been little more than an amateur, struggling with brute material in the infancy of his trade or calling. No, my friend! I am glad not to be coeval with Pericles.

loved, she insisted, body and soul. Even as the fires of Erebus slumber beneath their mantle of ice, she concealed, under a varnish of conventionality—the crust was not so thick in her case—a nature throbbing with passion. She was everlastingly unappeased, because incurably romantic.

All life, she truly declared, is a search for a friend.

Unfortunately she sought with her eyes open, having never grasped the elementary truth that to find a friend one must close one eye: to keep him—two. She always attributed to men qualities which, she afterwards discovered, they did not possess.

"It won't do," he sadly reflected, laying down the pen. "The adaptation is too palpable. Why does everybody anticipate my ideas? The fact is, I have nothing to say. I can only feel.

Everything went right, so long as I was in love with myself. Now everything goes wrong.

"

"Later on, under the Romans, the place seems to have been dedicated to Priapic rites. That is rather a depreciation, isn't it? It brings us down from fruitfulness to mere lasciviousness. But where are you going to draw the line?

Everything tends to lose its hallowed meaning; it becomes degraded, bestialized.

Still, the roots of the idea are sound. In giving sensual attributes to a garden god the ancients had in mind the recklessness, the spendthrift abundance, of all nature—not excluding our own.

do not forget that your view of that age has filtered through Roman stoicism and English puritanism which speak with envy lurking at their hearts—the envy of the incomplete creature for him who dares express himself.

A plague has infected the world—the plague of repression.

Don't you think that the man who made this Faun was entitled to dine well?"

"You are unaware of a struggle between your own mind and that of the artist? I am glad.

It is the test of beauty and vitality that a beholder refuses to acquiesce at first glance.

There is a conflict to be undergone. This thing thrusts itself upon us; it makes no concessions, does it? And yet one cannot but admire! You will seldom encounter that sensation among the masterpieces of the Renaissance. They welcome you with open arms.

"No. Men have lost their frankness, their self-assurance. Whoever yields, must be confident of his own strength. Our contemporaries have lost that feeling.

They dare not be themselves. They eke out lack of sincerity by profusion of commonplace.

Unlike the heroes of Homer, they repress their fears—they repress everything, save their irrepressible flatulence of mind. They are expansive in unimportant matters and at wrong moments—blown about in a whirl of fatuous extremes. The impersonal note has vanished. Why has it gone, Mr. Denis?"

It would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition. A man could live at Toledo by subscribing to certain fixed opinions; he could be assured of a reasonable degree of privacy. Nothing could save him, under socialism. An insupportable world!

When people cease to reflect they become idealists.

"

"Sometimes one cannot help oneself. It shall not occur again! I will try to be more amusing next time you come. If I thought it would help, I would communicate my sorrows and claim your sympathy. But what does it avail to unburden oneself?

Friends will share our joys, but every man is a solitary in his griefs.

One soon finds that out! One soon realizes the vanity of all those talks about the consolations of philosophy and the comforts of religion, doesn't one? I suppose even you have your moments of dejection?"

"Perfectly. We are not stones—least of all persons like yourself. I would not be at your age again, not for the wealth of Croesus! I suffered too much.

All young people suffer too much; they bear it silently, like heroes.

The eye of youth dilates and distorts the images. The focussing process is painful. Youth has no norm.

"The old teacher? Let me see…. He said: do not be discomposed by the opinions of inept persons. Do not swim with the crowd. They who are all things to their neighbours, cease to be anything to themselves.

Even a diamond can have too many facets.

Avoid the attrition of vulgar minds; keep your edges intact. He also said: A man can protect himself with fists or sword but his best weapon is his intellect. A weapon must be forged in the fire. The fire, in our case, is tribulation.

keep your edges intact. He also said: A man can protect himself with fists or sword but his best weapon is his intellect. A weapon must be forged in the fire. The fire, in our case, is tribulation. It must also be kept untarnished.

If the mind is clean, the body can take care of itself.

He said: delve deeply; not too deeply into the past, for it may make you derivative; nor yet into yourself—it will make you introspective. Delve into the living world and strive to bind yourself to its movement by a chain of your own welding.

"He said: '

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?

Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them.

"Suffering!" exclaimed Mr. Keith. "That is what you young poets want. At present you are too unperplexed and glib. Suffering! It would enlarge your repertoire; it would make you more human, individual, and truthful.

What is the unforgivable sin in poetry? Lack of candour.

How shall there be candour if the poet lacks worldly experience? Suffering! That is what you people want. It would make men of you."

No interest in Arabian history? Why not? Well, Thomas Keith—that is my stock. Pirates and adventurers. Of course I live sensibly. Shall I give you my recipe for happiness?

I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous.

I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague. You will find that a pretty good recipe, Denis."

"It does," replied Keith, quite unaware of the faint tinge of College irony in the other's words. "

Direct experience comes only from life. But you can get a kind of substitute out of books.

Perhaps you are afraid of them? Take the fellows by the throat! See what they have to say. Make them disgorge. Get at their facts. Pull them to pieces. I tell you what, Denis. You must go through a course of Samuel Butler.

Poets are a case of genepistasis. If they would at least get a new stock of ideas! Their demonology is so hopelessly threadbare. But why an artist? I think you were made for a bank manager, Denis. Don't look so surprised.

Everybody grows up, you know. Shelley, if he had lived long enough, would have become a passable gentleman farmer.

You can take my word for that."

Of the inhabitants of Nepenthe it must be said to their credit that they endure their lot with equanimity, and even cheerfulness. Their wine costs nothing. Why grumble at the inscrutable ways of Providence?

Why be thirsty, why be sober, when you can get as drunk as a lord for the asking?

For the rest, there are indications to show that such was not the original condition of affairs on the island. On the contrary, certain legends still current among the country-folk lead one to suspect that fountains once flowed on this arid rock.

And his eye roved along the serrated contours of the mainland, its undulating shore-line, its distant peaks throbbing in the sunset glow; they rested upon many villages, coral-tinted specks of light, so far away they seemed to belong to another world.

It was a pleasure to breathe on these aerial heights, surrounded by sky and sea; to survey the world as a bird might survey it.

Like floating in air….

You could not possibly expect to find in a successful American merchant those features which go to form a successful English ecclesiastic. Certain human attributes were mutually exclusive—avarice and generosity, for instance; others no doubt mysteriously but inextricably intertwined.

A man was an individual; he could not be divided or taken to pieces; he could not be expected to possess virtues incompatible with the rest of his mental equipment, however desirable such virtues might be.

Who knows? Van Koppen's doubtful acts might be an unavoidable expression of his personality, an integral part of that nature under whose ferocious stimulus he had climbed to his present enviable position. And Mr.

While disporting himself in amphibious joy among the tepid waves he seemed to cast off that sense of unease which had pursued him of late.

It was good to inhale the harsh salty savour—to submit himself to these calming voices—to float, like a careless Leviathan, in the blue immensity; good to be alive, simply alive.

Another hot and clammy day was in store for the island. No matter. This sirocco, of which older inhabitants might well complain, had so far exerted no baleful influence upon him. Quite the reverse.

"Nothing at all. You are thinking of your own mother. You forget that you never see her. Any son can live with any mother under those conditions.

The fact remains: nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother.

Look around you, and see if it is not true! Honour thy father and thy mother. Perhaps. But we must civilize our mothers before we can expect any rational companionship between them and their sons. Girls are different.

And the geographical elements that went to the making of a home are also dispersed. Rich and poor roam like gipsies from one country to another, from one flat into the next; the patriarchal board is replaced by clubs and grill-rooms and fried-fish shops.

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

Note, too, that the family has outgrown its ecclesiastical sanction; the oil of supernaturalism which once greased the wheels has run dry; the machinery is creaking. Industrial conditions have killed the old home. REQUIESCAT! Honour thy father and mother. Industrialism has killed that commandment.

"Why should you find it complex, when I find it simple? Let me see. Our lives are perfectly insignificant, aren't they? We know it for a fact. But we don't like it.

We don't like being of no account. We want some thing to make us feel more valuable than we are.

Consequently we invent a fiction to explain away that insignificance—the fiction of a personality overhead everlastingly occupied in watching every single one of us, and keenly engrossed in our welfare.

hence their peculiar emanations resemble each other more or less. That is why morality compares so unfavourably with intellectuality, which is the product of the upper sections of society and flashes out new lights every moment. But even morality changes.

The Spartans, a highly moral people, thought it positively indecent not to steal.

A modern vice, such as mendacity, was accounted a virtue by the greatest nation of antiquity. A modern virtue, like that of forgiving one's enemies, was accounted a vice proper to slaves.

If is a positive strain to keep one's mind at that low level. Why should I impose this strain upon myself? When a group-up man shows an unfeigned interest in such questions I regard him as a case of arrested development.

All morality is a generalization, and all generalizations are tedious.

Why should I plague myself with what is tedious? Altogether the question that confronts me is not whether morality is worth talking about, but whether it's worth laughing at. Sometimes I think it is.

This one was not quite like his native firmament. Here was no suggestion of a level space overhead, remote, but still conceivable—a space whereon some god might have sat enthroned, note-book in hand, jotting down men's virtues, and vices, and what not.

A sky of this kind was obviously not built to accommodate deities in a sitting posture.

Instead of commenting on this simple observation he remarked:

How would you like to be haled before a Court of law for some ridiculous trifle, which became a crime only because it used to be a sin, and became a sin only because some dyspeptic old antediluvian was envious of his neighbour's pleasure?

Our statute-book reeks of discarded theories of conduct; the serpent's trail of the theologian, of the reactionary, is over all.

"

The officer was on the spot in a twinkling, sword and trumpet in hand. And there, in all conscience, the matter ought to have rested—with the identification and bestowal in custody of the turbulent parties.

But frenzy hung in the air; a red cloud of insanity was hovering over Nepenthe.

Although the volcano continued to behave in exemplary fashion, although the clergy had done their utmost to allay popular apprehensions, the native mind had not calmed down since the news concerning the Saint Elias fountain and those other portents had been disseminated.

"Everybody blames the poor sirocco. I imagine you have long been maturing for this change, unbeknown to yourself. And what does it mean? Only that you are growing up.

Nobody need be ashamed of growing up….

Here we are, at last! We will land at the little beach yonder, near the end of that gulley. You can go ashore and have a look at the old thermal establishment.

All the ordinary sights and sounds of morning—the vehicles plying for hire, the cracking of whips, the cries of the fish and fruit vendors—all were gone.

The deathly stillness was broken only by a clangour of the town clock, tolling the hours into a darkened world.

Half a dozen adventurous spirits had gathered together at the Club. They called themselves adventurous. As a matter of fact they were scared out of their wits and had gone there merely with a view to leaning on each other for mutual support and courage.

Hardly ever. He thought of the lady lying dead upstairs and all she had done towards establishing and consolidating their social position; how she had economized for him, yes, and lied for him—better, far better, than he could ever hope to lie.

For she possessed that most priceless of all gifts: she believed her own lies.

She looked people straight in the face and spoke from her heart; a falsehood, before it left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth. She was a florid, improvident liar. There was no classical parsimony about her misstatements.

For she possessed that most priceless of all gifts: she believed her own lies. She looked people straight in the face and spoke from her heart; a falsehood, before it left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth.

She was a florid, improvident liar. There was no classical parsimony about her misstatements.

They were copious baroque, and encrusted with pleasing and unexpected tricks of ornamentation.

As a teacher of geometry, it is my business to dwell among angles; and the thirty-five boys in my class will bear witness to the fact that my relations with angles, great and small, are above reproach.

I admit that there are angles everywhere, and that a man who really likes their company will stumble against them in the most unexpected places.

But they are sometimes hard to see, unless one deliberately looks for them. I think Charlie must have been looking for them in Trinidad."

He knew his good friend. Keith could be decidedly fatiguing, especially when dead sober.

He had all the Scotchman's passion for dissecting the obvious, discovering new facets in the commonplace, and squeezing the last drop out of a foregone conclusion.

It was a thousand pities that the Duchess, in the exuberance of her triumph, spread abroad the news of the millionaire's promise. For that news had an unfortunate and unexpected result.

He appealed to your purse for the supposed welfare of some pet degenerate. Prometheus appealed to your intelligence for the real welfare of rational beings. A rich man found it extremely simple, no doubt, to sign a cheque.

But an act was not necessarily sensible because it happened to be simple.

People ought to dominate their reflexes. Prometheus did not choose the simplest course—he chose the wisest, and found it a pretty tough job, too. That alone proved him to have been a man of sound digestion and robust health.

No! I fail to discover any personal advantage to be gained from excess of bile. The bilious eye sees intensely, no doubt, but in a distorted and narrow fashion; it is incapable of a generous outlook. Cloudy, unserene! A closing-up, instead of a widening-out.

The bowels of compassion: what a wonderful old phrase! They ought to be kept open.

I look around me, and see extraordinarily little goodwill among my fellow-creatures. Here is Miss Wilberforce. What she yearns for is the milk of human kindness—gentle words, gentle dealing, from all of us. Instead of that, every one is ready to cast stones at her.

"I remember your using those words. They struck me as remarkable because, for my own part, I have not yet discovered any man, woman, or child who could shock me. Some persons make a profession of being scandalized. I am profoundly distrustful of them.

It is the prerogative of vulgarians to be shocked.

If I ever felt inclined to blush, it would not be a the crooked behaviour of men, but at their crooked intellectual processes.

Madame Steynlin's hats were proverbial. She was always appearing in new ones of the most costly varieties. And never, by any chance, did they accord with her uncommon and rather ripe style of beauty.

Madame Steynlin was too romantic to dress well. She trimmed her heart, and not her garments.

A tidy little income, however, enabled her to eke out lack of taste by recklessness of expenditure. This particular hat, it was observed, must have cost a fortune. And yet it was a perfect fright;

He is not a pretty fellow. Most men only give him a shy glance out of a corner of their eye. It scares them out of their wits and makes them say all sorts of snobbishly respectful things about him. Sheer flummery!

It is with Death as it is with God—we call them good because we are afraid of what they can do to us.

That accounts for our politeness. Death, universal and inevitable, is none the less a villainous institution. Every other antagonist can be ignored or bribed or circumvented or crushed outright.

Sheer flummery! It is with Death as it is with God—we call them good because we are afraid of what they can do to us. That accounts for our politeness.

Death, universal and inevitable, is none the less a villainous institution.

Every other antagonist can be ignored or bribed or circumvented or crushed outright. But here is a damnable spectre who knocks at the door and does not wait to hear you say, 'Come in.' Hateful!

In earliest morning he would insist upon tottering forth to watch the sun as it rose behind the peaks of the distant mainland, flooding the sea with golden radiance and causing the precipices to glitter like burnished bronze.

He loved the sunrise—he saw it so seldom.

Then breakfast; a rather simple breakfast by way of a change. It was on one of these occasions that the chef made a mistake which his master was slow to forgive.

the rest of us, surrounded by a world of sordid ugliness, have become positively afraid of their fair but reproachful shapes. Ah, Mr. van Koppen, that was the age of true refinement, the age of gold!

Nowadays—nowadays we only carry our troubles about with us.

"

That peculiar atmosphere is dissipated; the genius of the earlier moment driven out beyond recapture; we must adapt ourselves to other conditions and begin anew, often with a good deal of trouble—often, how often, against our inclination! I call that a perverse custom.

Every state of the mind, whether we are in society or alone, should be pressed to the last drop, irrespective of whether we happen to have swallowed a final mouthful of food or not.

When the conversation has died, as everything must die, from sheer inability to draw further breaths of life, then is the time to break up that old encircling dome of thought; to construct a fresh one, if need be, in a fresh environment."

Good intentions—no. Nobody need attempt such an imposture on his stomach, an upright and uncompromising organ, which refuses to listen to nonsense. Or let them try the experiment.

Gastritis will be the result of good intentions….

"

there is a general widening and multiplying of notions. This, I think, ought to make us careful as to the words we employ, and ready to coin new ones whenever a new idea is to be expressed.

If we enlarge our concepts, we should likewise enlarge our vocabulary.

When I spoke of beauty, I used the word in its narrow classical meaning, a meaning which may be out of fashion, but which has the great advantage that it happens to be irrevocably fixed and defined for us by what the ancients themselves have …

"I am using the word in the antique sense. Your modern slavery is of another kind. It has all the drawbacks and few of the advantages of the classic variety. It gives leisure to the wrong people—to those who praise the dignity of labour.

Men who talk about the Dignity of Labour had better say as little as possible about civilization, for fear of confusing it with the North Pole.

"

that there are perpetual readjustments going on. They are supposed to indicate an upward movement, some vague step in the direction of betterment which, frankly, I confess myself unable to perceive.

What is the use of civilization if it makes a man unhappy and unhealthy?

The uncivilized African native is happy and healthy. The poor creatures among whom I worked, in the slums of London, are neither the one nor the other; they are civilized. I glance down the ages, and see nothing but—change! And perhaps not even change.

What is the use of civilization if it makes a man unhappy and unhealthy? The uncivilized African native is happy and healthy. The poor creatures among whom I worked, in the slums of London, are neither the one nor the other; they are civilized.

I glance down the ages, and see nothing but—change! And perhaps not even change.

Mere differences of opinion as to the value of this or that in different times and places."

"Pardon me! I was using the words in a specific sense. What I mean by progress is the welding together of society for whatever ends.

Progress is a centripetal movement, obliterating man in the mass. Civilization is centrifugal; it permits, it postulates, the assertion of personality.

The terms are, therefore, not synonymous. They stand for hostile and divergent movements. Progress subordinates. Civilization co-ordinates. The individual emerges in civilization. He is submerged in progress."

something which makes them hold up their heads. A friend, an older brother; not a pedagogue. I would never recommend a boy to study these writings. They would lower his spirits and his self-respect.

Solomon, like all reformed debauchees, has a depressing influence on the young.

"

"

How shall a plant survive, save by withering now and then?

If the ancients had not exhausted themselves with Homer, the soil might not have been ready for our Renaissance. A bad sign? Who can tell! Good and bad—I question whether these are respectable words to use."

Will you admire something more adapted to modern needs than those intemperate Hebrew doctrines; something with more delicately adjusted mechanism? The mendicant friar, that flower of Oriental ethics—he is not up to date. He resembles all Semites. He lacks self-respect. He apologizes for being alive.

It is not pretty—to apologize for being alive!

"

That is what makes his work attractive to me: the personality of the writer. The facts that he records, taken in conjunction with those he slurs over or omits—they give one such an insight into changing human nature!

You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

"

You will then see what I mean. The prints are not exactly true to nature; these people did not want to be true to nature. And yet they convey a better impression of the place than the modern pictures.

Perhaps there are two truths: the truth of fact and that of suggestion.

Perrelli is very suggestive; romance grafted upon erudition, and blossoming out of it! So imaginative! He has a dissertation on the fishes of Nepenthe—it reads like a poem and is yet full of practical gastronomic hints. Can you picture Virgil collaborating with Apicius?"

Happy mortal! Free from all superfluities and encumbrances of the flesh! Enviable mortal! He reduced earthly existence to its simplest and most effective terms; he owed no man anything; he kept alive, on a miserable income, the sacred flame of enthusiasm.

To aspire, that was the secret of life.

Thinking thus, Mr. Heard began to understand the bibliographer's feeling for Mrs. Meadows. She lived for her child—he for his work. They were alike; calm and self-contained, both of them; incapable of illusions, of excesses in thought or conduct.

Just sign this declaration, please. Then perhaps you will meet your mother sooner than you expect. Can't read or write? Well, put your cross to it and may the Madonna help you! For I can't. I've done my best to be impartial, but

God alone can steer a fool. He makes a specialty of it, they tell me.

If so, you've got a sporting chance…."

But a fool! Torquemada, the zealous priest, the man of God, could never quite repress the promptings of his blood. He had all the fanatic's appreciation of violent methods; all the Southerner's fondness for a miscreant, and contempt for a simpleton.

A mere fool—what's the use of him on earth?

Had the culprit been any ordinary Christian, His Reverence would not have dreamt of interfering; gladly would he have let him spend the remainder of his day sin prison which everybody knew to be the best place for stupid people—it kept them out of mischief.

"As you know, my son, I can neither read nor write. Those were not considered respectable accomplishments, in my day, for a lad of spirit or a man of honour. Devil's work! But we live in an effeminate age.

Virtue is at a discount. The wise man, while observing these things with regret, adapts himself to them.

He marches with the times. They call us reactionaries. It depends upon boys like you to show the world what reactionaries are good for. The whole town has already learnt to respect your manly instincts.

Don Giustino was the implacable enemy of modernism, a living disproof of the vulgar assertion that freemasonry is the sole key to success in modern Italy. A formidable man! And growing more formidable every day, as his wealth increased.

His income was already such that he could afford to be honest; nothing but the force of old habits kept him from developing into a positive saint.

It stands to reason that a person of this caliber would have sniffed at a paltry remuneration of five thousand francs offered by an obscure country priest. But Don Giustino was a good son of the Church.

There was nothing like this in Holy Russia. God would never have allowed it. The uselessness of this sea had always been to him a source of perplexity and even vague apprehension. The spectacle of this shining immensity troubled his world-scheme.

Why did God create water, when land would have been so much more useful?

Often had he puzzled on the subject…. Why?

A breath of old Russia was wafted into his nostrils. He remembered the lusty, jovial country folk, the songs and dances at hay-making, the fragrance of the land, the sluggish rivers rolling their brown mud about the plains, the mild long-drawn evenings.

He felt again that all-pervading charm of sadness, of tender yearning, that hangs in the pale Russian sky and penetrates to the very soul of the endless country.

Gloomy autumn days—wet leaves and lowering horizons. The long winter within doors.

He was so ill and oppressed too. Worse than before.

He felt himself rotting earthwards, like a fungus of his own native forests under autumn rains.

His body remained inert but his eye, roaming away from the straw pallet, fixed itself upon the door. When, when would that kindly gentleman with the instrument arrive?

Mr. Eames, the soul of honesty, the scorner of all subterfuge and crooked dealing, put on a new character. He lied like a trooper. He lied better than a trooper; that is to say, not only forcefully but convincingly.

He lied as only a lover of bibliographical curios can lie, in defence of his treasure.

He thanked them for their courteous visit and bade them keep their gold.

It was Mr. Eames' second lapse from grace.

Gentlemen do not tell falsehoods. He did not want to be a gentleman just then.

He wanted that pamphlet.

The happiness of that whole family was at his mercy. She had been goaded to desperation. Mr. Heard began to understand.

To understand—that was not enough. Anybody could understand.

Keith took his arm and remarked:

You ought to read Pepys' DIARY. That is what I have been doing. I am also rather low-spirited just now. The end of another spring, you know—it always makes me feel sad. Pepys is the antidote. He is a tonic.

Every Englishman ought to be compelled, for the good of his soul, to go through Pepys once in three years.

"

"His universal zest! It seems to be extinct nowadays; it is a charm that I have not discovered in any living Englishman. What a healthy outlook! Not a trace of straining anywhere.

He took life with both hands.

How he threw himself into his work, his amusements, his clothes and women and politics and food and theatres and pictures. Warm heart, cool head. So childlike, and yet so wise. There's only one thing that troubles me about him—his love of music.

"

If the lives of all of us were written down with the same remorseless candour, how few would stand the test.

"

I don't consider myself bound to such a vulgar standard. And how spectacular we are, in matters of so-called right and wrong. That is because we have painfully cultivated the social conscience. Posing, and playing to the gallery!

Mankind is curiously melodramatic, my dear fellow; full of affected reverence for its droll little institutions.

As if anybody really cared what another person does! As if everybody were not chuckling inwardly all the time!"

"I don't trouble about tests," replied Keith. "

The whole herd of humanity adapts its pace to that of the weakest lamb.

The capacity of the weakest lamb—that is the test. I don't consider myself bound to such a vulgar standard. And how spectacular we are, in matters of so-called right and wrong. That is because we have painfully cultivated the social conscience.

"I don't trouble about heights and depths. Does it not all depend upon where we take up our stand? Must we always remain stationary like vegetables?

A bird knows nothing of heights and depths.

You sit here at night-time and look at the stars. They are firm-fixed, you say. Well, they are not firm-fixed. Therefore it is the wrong way to look at them. I have also written a diary, Heard.

He was in an elegiac mood, though he meant to drive away his cares later in the evening by the "Falernian system." He felt the exodus in the air. Another spring drawing to its close—everybody scattering!

He was filled, too, with that peculiar pensiveness which troubles complex people when they have done a kindly act.

Virtue had gone out of him.

And you so compassionate! I do not understand you. I do not understand myself either. We are always groping about in the dark, are we not? We are always puzzling about our own problems instead of helping other people with theirs.

Perhaps one should not think so much of oneself, though it is an interesting subject.

Tell me, if music says nothing to you, why not leave it alone?"

"Because I want to be able to extract pleasure from it, as you do. That is what makes me curious. I like to understand things, because then I can begin to enjoy them.

I think knowledge should intensify our pleasures. That is its aim and object, so far as I am concerned.

What are other joys—those of the illiterate and incurious? A dog scratching his fleas in the sunshine. They too are not wholly to be despised—"

"Because I want to be able to extract pleasure from it, as you do. That is what makes me curious.

I like to understand things, because then I can begin to enjoy them.

I think knowledge should intensify our pleasures. That is its aim and object, so far as I am concerned. What are other joys—those of the illiterate and incurious? A dog scratching his fleas in the sunshine. They too are not wholly to be despised—"

"I think that is a pity, Mr. Keith. If I had children I would let them run wild. People are too tame nowadays. That is why so few of them have any charm. These poor Russians—no one tries to understand them.

Why is everybody so much alike? Because we never follow our feelings.

And yet, what is a surer guide than the heart? We seem to live in a world of echoes."

People are too tame nowadays. That is why so few of them have any charm. These poor Russians—no one tries to understand them. Why is everybody so much alike? Because we never follow our feelings. And yet, what is a surer guide than the heart?

We seem to live in a world of echoes.

"

"I think that is a pity, Mr. Keith. If I had children I would let them run wild.

People are too tame nowadays. That is why so few of them have any charm.

These poor Russians—no one tries to understand them. Why is everybody so much alike? Because we never follow our feelings. And yet, what is a surer guide than the heart? We seem to live in a world of echoes."

"

A world of masks, Madame Steynlin. It is the only theatre worth looking at….

"

He remembered his visits at daybreak to the beach—those unspoken confidences with the sunlit element to whose friendly caresses he had abandoned his body. How calm it was, too, in this evening light.

Near at hand, somewhere, lay a sounding cave; it sang a melody of moist content.

Shadows lengthened; fishing boats, moving outward for their night-work, steered darkly across the luminous river at his feet. Those jewel-like morning tints of blue and green had faded from the water; the southern cliff-scenery, projections of it, caught a fiery glare. Bastions of flame….

Well, he would see them all in a few days. And how would England compare with the tingling realism of Nepenthe? Rather parochial, rather dun; grey-in-grey; subdued light above—crepuscular emotions on earth. Everything fireproof, seaworthy. Kindly thoughts expressed in safe unvarying formulas. A guileless people!

Ships tossing at sea; minds firmly anchored to the commonplace.

Abundance for the body; diet for the spirit. The monotony of a nation intent upon respecting laws and customs. Horror of the tangent, the extreme, the unconventional. God save the King.

And how would England compare with the tingling realism of Nepenthe? Rather parochial, rather dun; grey-in-grey; subdued light above—crepuscular emotions on earth. Everything fireproof, seaworthy. Kindly thoughts expressed in safe unvarying formulas. A guileless people! Ships tossing at sea; minds firmly anchored to the commonplace.

Abundance for the body; diet for the spirit.

The monotony of a nation intent upon respecting laws and customs. Horror of the tangent, the extreme, the unconventional. God save the King.

Rather parochial, rather dun; grey-in-grey; subdued light above—crepuscular emotions on earth. Everything fireproof, seaworthy. Kindly thoughts expressed in safe unvarying formulas. A guileless people! Ships tossing at sea; minds firmly anchored to the commonplace. Abundance for the body; diet for the spirit.

The monotony of a nation intent upon respecting laws and customs.

Horror of the tangent, the extreme, the unconventional. God save the King.

And still Count Caloveglia said nothing. He gazed at the sun, whose orb now rolled upon the rim of the horizon. Slowly it sank, fusing the water into a golden pool. A hush fell upon nature.

Colours fled from earth into the sky.

They scattered among the clouds. The enchantment began, overhead.

That is why I worship the inexorable rigour of form. We of the South, Mr. Heard, are drenched in volatile beauty…. And yet one never wearies of these things! It is what you call a glamour, an interlude of witchcraft.

Nature is a-tremble with the miraculous.

She beckons us to explore her strange places. She says: Tread here, my friend—and here; tread where you have never trodden before! The sage surrenders his intelligence, and grows young again. He recaptures the spirit of his boyish dreams. He peers into worlds unknown. See!

Count Caloveglia was no colourist. He was a sculptor, about to reap the reward of his labours. The cheque would be in his pocket that night. Three hundred and fifty thousand francs—or nearly. That is what made him not exactly grave, but reserved.

Excess of joy, like all other excesses, is not meet to be displayed before men.

All excess is unseemly. Nothing overmuch. Measure in everything.