Under Western Eyes

Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement — but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.