Luke Mohan > Recent Status Updates

Writing a book “is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you killed a monster and fling him to the public.”

Of course, a certain number of people will be offended… But I recognize the fact that certain elements must always be hostile, and I am determined not to allow them to interfere with my actions.

There will not be wanting those who will remind me that in this matter, my opinion finds no support in age or experience. To such, I shall reply, that, if what is written as false or foolish, neither age nor experience should fortify it; and if it is true, it needs no such support.

Like Nelson, he freely admitted that he was chiefly driven, not by patriotism, but by ambition.

“I have faith in my star – that is that I am intended to do something in the world. If I am mistaken – what does it matter? My life has been a pleasant one, and though I should regret to leave it – it would be a regret that perhaps I should never know.”

(On capital punishment) “Justice in every form should not shrink from publicity“

…he hoped “to build up a scaffolding of logical and consistent views, which will perhaps tend to the creation of a logical and consistent mind… A good knowledge of these (Annual Register) would arm me with a sharp sword. Macaulay, Gibbon, Plato, etc. must train the muscles to wield that sword to the greatest effect.

…obviously, his new life (in India) was enchanting. But a new hunger was growing within him. That appetite, and the means he took to satisfy it, marks the end of his youth, and the incipient signs of his emergence as an exceptional man. The transformation began with early pangs of intellectual curiosity.

“The essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth”
“A great, crude, strong, young people are the Americans – like a boisterous, healthy boy among innervated, but well-bred ladies and gentlemen.”

Officers drank wine, brandy, and whiskey, and Other Ranks drank gin and beer, because it had always been this way.

British workmen in the nineteenth century, undiverted by mass media, often read deeply and thoughtfully.

In the fine arts, London was a suburb of Paris and Berlin, but in literature it led the way.

The ancestors of workmen who read nothing today were familiar with Pilgrim’s progress and Paradise Lost and could quote from them.

The upper class had, as it had always had, a moral code all its own.

Only by understanding the spell of the empire, and particularly the Raj, can one begin to grasp the Churchillian essence.

There is but one loyalty from which no man can be absolved in heart for any cause.

Ever as their power and glory grew greater, their unquiet increased.

But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endured for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.

The world was a master, whom ‘twas not easy to fly, when once one had yielded to its dominion

Now she had learned that the world is like a tavern – where he who has naught more to spend from is cast out at the door.

Creative way of calling people ugly:
“Their husbands were best seen at night when no moon was shining…”

…bare is back without brother behind it.

‘Twas as though his own life-roots were twined in with those of his kindred, somewhere deep down in the darksome earth. Every blow that struck one of them, every ill that sucked the marrow of any, was felt by all.

His mother was the mother that had new children, who, as they grew from out the hands of the women, joined the little troop of brothers, to share its life in fellowship, its friendship and its strife; mother had open hands through which flowed all that they needed; mother knew what to do for well-nigh all ills; Mother was like the fire on the hearth, she bore the life of the home…