After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
Evelyn WaughRead
You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the transformative power of faith and morality in shaping a person's character.
Evelyn Waugh's quote reflects on the significant impact that his Catholic faith has had on his conduct and moral compass. He suggests that without the guidance and supernatural assistance provided by his religion, he would be prone to negative behaviors and less human in his moral sensibilities. This highlights the importance of belief systems in influencing individual character and ethical behavior.
In practice
During a speech on morality, one could use this quote to illustrate how faith influences ethical behavior.
After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?
That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked β or that America is culturally bankrupt.
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.
But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.
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