Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improveme...nt; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says, "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth--who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unl...ike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in hi...s rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read so...mething of B's. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the... writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an airhole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing st...ands in the way of our happy union.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English language is like a broad river on whose bank a few patient anglers are sitting, while, higher up, the stream is being ...polluted by a string of refuse-barges tipping out their muck.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »