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Also it was different not having a father and mother, and Kay had taught him that being different was wrong.
he admired Kay and was a born follower. He was a hero-worshipper.
knights were bound by their vows to help people in distress.
“why can’t they get us the electric light and company’s water?”
“My name,” said the old man, “is Merlyn.”
It was not that he had dirty finger-nails, or anything like that, but some large bird seemed to have been nesting in his hair.
But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind.
He was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.
Everybody went to church in those days, and liked it.
It was nice for the dogs to have their god with them, in visible form.
Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”
direction is the better part of valour.
There is practically no difference between flying in the water and flying in the air.
You will see what it is to be a king.”
“Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.
Nothing is so comfortable to sit in as a beech.
Ah, tempt not the foul fiend to his damnation.
All philosophers prefer to live in towers, as may be seen by visiting the room which Erasmus chose in his college at Cambridge, but Merlyn’s tower was even more beautiful than this.
Say not therefore to the Lord: What doest thou? But say in thy heart: Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?
“That is still in the future, Master.”
It was strange, but their battle had made them friends again, and each could look the other in the eye, with a kind of confused affection.
They were Saxons who had revolted against Uther Pendragon’s conquest, and who refused to accept a foreign king.
Anybody who eats in a you-know-what stronghold has to stay there for ever,
In the night mystery a hundred men breathed on every side of Wart, like the surge of our own blood which we can hear when we are writing or reading in the late and lonely hours.
The passion of nocturnal secrecy was a wine in his blood.
They were curled up, and did not seem to be either glad or sorry to be dead.
he now discovered, with a helpless feeling, that there were no words for the things he wanted to say. There were no words for happiness, for freedom, for liking, nor were there any words for their opposites.
The word it used for insane was Not-Done.
A question was a sign of insanity to them. Their life was not questionable: it was dictated.
the evil was in the bad people who abused it, not in the feudal system.
as each man assured himself of his neighbours, and the breath of life steamed away on the north wind sweetly, as each realized how beautiful life was,
Merlyn looked younger every year—which was only natural, because he was.
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.
One thing one moment, and another thing ter next.
to dig, and love your home. These are the true end of philosophy.”
I will not alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenceless embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me.
You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys.
True warfare is what happens between bands of the same species.
True warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism.
“Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.”
“We have had a good time while we were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly.
“Can’t I?” replied Merlyn, taking up the position always used by philosophers who propose to dematerialize.
Those were lawless days and it was not safe to leave your house—or even to go to sleep in it—unless you were certain that it was impregnable.
The Wart walked up to the great sword for the third time. He put out his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.
for animals know when they have come to the end. Most of them have a dignity about dying, denied to human beings.
“We must avenge our family.” “Because our Mammy is the most beautiful woman in the high-ridged, extensive, ponderous, pleasantly-turning world.” “And because we love her.”
Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically—to those who hardly think about us in return.
The world was laid out before the two watchers like a toy, for they were on a high keep which dominated the town.
he were a good learner who enjoyed being alive and did not believe in original sin.
If there is one thing I can’t stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.”
