By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.
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Helen Burns to Jane (Ch. 9)Charlotte Bronte
» Charlotte Bronte - all quotes »
'By my lights, my son, you are a young man. [...] there should be love in your life. Am I at fault in my thinking?' 'Not at fault, Senior Brother. I loved once, and in truth I could love again. But the pain of loss was too much for me. I would rather live alone than suffer for it.' 'Then you are here to hide, Charreos, and it is not a good reason. The gift of life is too great to waste in such a fashion...'
David Gemmell
If you could escape your sufferings and did so, where would you go outside of them?
Antonio Porchia
Faced with problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility: escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. But today, I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape.
John Paul II (Pope)
You talk a great deal about building a better world for your children, but when you are young you can no more envision a world inherited by your children than you can conceive of dying. The society you mold, you mold for yourself.
It was this way with my generation. We were unhappy with what we inherited and we tried to reshape it in ways that would make it more tolerable to us. You were not uppermost in our thoughts.
Now, in middle age, some of us are trying to rewrite history. Some of us tell you, "We labored and dared and sacrificed — all for you — yet we hear no thanks."
You will not be unduly moved, I hope, by these laments. They are sentimental cries from persons so attached to the society they have rebuilt that they cannot bear the thought of seeing it overhauled by new proprietors.Russell Baker
Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?
Eric Hoffer
Bronte, Charlotte
Brook, Peter
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