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.
We do not merely perceive objects and hold thoughts in our minds: all our perceptions and thought processes are felt. All have a distinctive component that announces an unequivocal link between images and the existence of life in our organism.
Man has always been half-monster, half-dreamer.
Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately derived from facts.
Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.
In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology
And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.
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