Anthony Hope

“ Every real conviction springs from personal experience. I hate the law because it interfered with me. I'm not aware of any better reason. So I'm going on without it—unless somebody tries to steal my forty thousand, of course. Ambrose, thou art a humbug—or, more precisely, thou canst not avoid being a human individual!"
Lord Lynborough completed the entry in his diary—he was tolerably well aware that he might just as well not have written it—and cast his eyes toward the window of the library. ”

“ When I talk like this, Cromlech chuckles, loves me as a show, despises me as a mind. Roger—young Roger Fitz-Archdeacon—is all an incredulous amazement. I don't wonder. There is nothing so small and nothing so great—nothing so primitive and not a thing so complex—nothing so unimportant and so engrossing as this 'duel of the sexes.' A proves it a trifle, and is held great. B reckons it all-supreme, and becomes popular. ”

“ The human being as such? If I'm a vegetable, am I not a mistake? If I'm an animal, am I not a cruelty? If I'm a soul, am I not misplaced? I'd say 'Yes' to all this, save that I enjoy myself so much. Because I have forty thousand a year? ”

“ I don't believe in growing better in the common sense—that is, in an increasing power to resist what tempts you, to refrain from doing what you want. That ideal seems to me, more and more, to start from the wrong end. ”

“ No man refrains from doing what he wants to do. In the end the contradiction—the illogicality—is complete. You learn to want more wisely—that's all. Train desire, for you can never chain it.
"I'm engaged here and now on what is to all appearance the most trivial of businesses. I play the spiteful boy—she is an obstinate peevish girl. There are other girls too—one an insinuating tiny minx, who would wheedle a backward glance out of Simon Stylites as he remounted his pillar—and, by the sun in heaven, will get little more from this child of Mother Earth! ”

“ CHAPTER VI. EXERCISE BEFORE BREAKFAST. "Life—" (The extract is from Lynborough's diary, dated this same fourteenth of June) —"may be considered as a process (Cromlech's view, conducting to the tomb) —a programme (as, I am persuaded, Roger conceives it, marking off each stage thereof with a duly guaranteed stamp of performance) —or as a progress—in which light I myself prefer to envisage it. ”

“ He would take his swim alone, and early. At six o'clock he slipped out of the house and made for Beach Path. The fortified gate was too strong for his unaided efforts. Roger Wilbraham had told him that, if the way were impeded, he had a right to "deviate." He deviated now, lightly vaulting over the four-foot-high stone wall. ”