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“And what is going to happen when there is nobody to tell you? Are you never going to think for yourself?
Like the man in Eden before the fall, he was enjoying his innocence and fortune. Instead of being a poor squire, he was a king. Instead of being an orphan, he was loved by nearly everybody except the Gaels, and he loved everybody in return.
“Wars are never fought for one reason,” he said. “They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. It is the same with revolts.”
“It is only a personal reason. Personal reasons are no excuse for war.”
“The destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.”
Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.”
There is one fairly good reason for fighting—and that is, if the other man starts it.
A murderer, for instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and oppressing him—so why should a nation be allowed to?
Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.”
“After all, what is the good of killing poor kerns who do not know anything? It would be much better for the people who are angry to fight each other themselves, knight against knight.”
“Might is not Right.
I will institute a sort of order of chivalry. I will not punish the bad knights, or hang Lot, but I will try to get them into our Order.
We could call them the Knights of the Round Table.”
That child Lancelot who came over with You-know-who, for instance: we must get hold of kids like him. They will be the real Table.”
the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.”
she had come to see that asses do not mate with pythons.
Just then, Death came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I have come for you.’ ‘Why,’ exclaimed the terrified man, ‘I thought I met you in Damascus yesterday!’ ‘Exactly,’ said Death. ‘That was why I looked surprised—for I had been told to meet you today, in Aleppo.’
Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus.
“Love,” said Sir Grummore uneasily, “is a pretty strong passion, when you come to think of it.”
Arthur himself—who was everywhere, youthful, triumphant, over-excited.
it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.
LANCELOT ENDED BY being the greatest knight King Arthur had.
Out of a lifetime which at his age must have seemed to stretch little more than a week ahead, he gave thirty-six months to another man’s idea because he was in love with it.
It was easy not to be serious about the old fellow, for he was that peculiar creation which ignorant people laugh at—a genuine maestro.
The first time you do a thing, it is often exciting.
It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.
IT IS DIFFICULT to explain about Guenever, unless it is possible to love two people at the same time.
Merlyn always said that sportsmanship was the curse of the world, and so it is.
All these knights now are making a fetish of it. They are turning it into a competitive thing.
He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice.
It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.
“If you had told me the truth, I could have believed you.” “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. I was afraid you would be hurt.” “It has hurt me worse like this.” “I know it has.”
“Fie on your weeping, for ye weep never but when there is no boot.”)
The cognizance was of a silver woman on a sable field, with a knight kneeling at her feet.
To these young people, a sight of Arthur as he hunted in the greenwood was like seeing the idea of Royalty. They saw no man at all, but England.
Right must be established by right: it can’t be established by Force Majeur.
Don’t ever let anybody teach you to think, Lance: it is the curse of the world.”
Morals are difficult things to talk about, but what has happened is that we have invented a moral sense, which is rotting now that we can’t give it employment. And when a moral sense begins to rot it is worse than when you had none.
If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.
“Morals,” said Lionel, “are a form of insanity. Give me a moral man who insists on doing the right thing all the time, and I will show you a tangle which an angel couldn’t get out of.”
it is a waste of time to have ‘manners.’ Manners are only needed between people, to keep their empty affairs in working order. Manners makyth man, you know, not God.
You could not give up a human heart as you could give up drinking. The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but your lover’s soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you had a duty towards it.
He was groping towards Right as a criterion of its own—towards Justice as an abstract thing which did not lean upon power. In a few years he would be inventing Civil Law.
people are tenacious of life, and will go on living.
For in those days love was ruled by a different convention to ours. In those days it was chivalrous, adult, long, religious, almost platonic. It was not a matter about which you could make accusations lightly. It was not, as we take it to be nowadays, begun and ended in a long week-end.
The Dark and Middle Ages! The Nineteenth Century had an impudent way with its labels.
Every clerk in every country was a man of culture in those days—it was his profession to be so. “Every letter written,” said a medieval abbot, “is a wound inflicted on the devil.”
I was never so happy in my life. And I dare say I shall never be so happy again.”
She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul.
What horrible creatures humans are! If we see a flower as we walk through the fields, we lop off its head with a stick.
