Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
If you want your own way, God will let you have it. Hell is the enjoyment of one's own way forever.
Interpretation
Choosing your own way can lead to eternal consequences, often negative.
This quote by Dorothy L. Sayers emphasizes the idea that pursuing one's own desires and selfish inclinations can lead to a state of discomfort or suffering. It warns that while one may be allowed to follow their own path, doing so without regard for higher principles can result in a hellish existence, where satisfaction is derived from one's misguided choices.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the dangers of selfishness, one might use this quote to illustrate the pitfalls of pursuing only personal desires.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?" "You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.
. . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.
What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
If you want to know what a given society believes in, look at what its largest buildings are devoted to.
Almsgiving, according to the Gospel, is not mere philanthropy; rather it is a concrete expression of charity, a theological virtue that demands interior conversion to love of God and neighbor, in imitation of Jesus Christ, who, dying on the cross, gave his entire self for us.
Remember itβs a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way.
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