50 Books to Read Before You Die

words to inspire before you expire

Tag: Honor

February 22, 2019 /

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

—from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

December 28, 2018 /

[Mr. Hepworth, asking for Roger Carbury’s thoughts on Augustus Melmotte]:

“‘You think Melmotte will turn out a failure.’

‘A failure! Of course he’s a failure, whether rich or poor;—a miserable imposition, a hollow vulgar fraud from beginning to end,—too insignificant for you and me to talk of, were it not that his position is a sign of the degeneracy of the age. What are we coming to when such as he is an honoured guest at our tables?'”

—from The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

June 18, 2018 /

“‘A knight I am, and a knight I will die, if it be heaven’s goodwill. Some pass through the spacious field of proud ambition; others through that of servile and base flattery; others by the way of deceitful hypocrisy; and some by that of true religion: but I, by the influence of my star, take the narrow path of knight-errantry, for the exercise whereof I despise wealth, but not honour. I have redressed grievances, righted wrongs, chastised insolences, vanquished giants, and trampled upon hobgoblins: I am in love, but only because knights-errant must be so; and, being so, I am no vicious lover, but a chaste Platonic one. My intentions are always directed to virtuous ends, to do good to all, and to hurt none. Whether he, who means thus, acts thus, and lives in the practice of all this, deserves to be called a fool, let your grandeurs judge, most excellent duke and duchess.'”

—from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

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