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“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. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never
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If there is one thing I can’t stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.”
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. I suppose that all endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my famous Civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.”
Arthur was annoyed. “If God is supposed to be merciful,” he retorted, “I don’t see why He shouldn’t allow people to stumble into heaven, just as well as climb there.
It was not all of it a plot-like life: most of it was just story—one thing after the other—a chain of unnecessary accidents.
