L Character Quotes

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.

When you are joyful, when you say yes to life and have fun and project positivity all around you, you become a sun in the center of every constellation, and people want to be near you.

Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

I am tired of people saying that poor character is the only reason people do wrong things. Actually, circumstances cause people to act a certain way. It's from those circumstances that a person's attitude is affected followed by weakening of character. Not the reverse. If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others and judging their lives as either black or white, good or bad. We all live our lives in shades of gray.

Love is proved the moment you let go of someone because they need you to.

If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.

If you want to discover the true character of a person, you have only to observe what they are passionate about.

The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it

We’re only ever playing fifty percent of a character. The rest is us, and we’re afraid to show people who we really are. We’re afraid of looking foolish if we reveal the full force of our emotions.

It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.

Character is what you are in the dark.

Never annoy an inspirational author or you will become the poison in her pen and the villian in every one of her books.

Sometimes you only get one chance to rewrite the qualities of the character you played in a person's life story. Always take it. Never let the world read the wrong version of you.

Thus, when we plead for the gift of charity, we aren't asking for lovely feelings toward someone who bugs us or someone who has injured or wounded us. We are actually pleading for our very natures to be changed, for our character and disposition to become more and more like the Savior's, so that we literally feel as He would feel and thus do what He would do.

It is better to be alone than to become a person that loses his soul to the fear of loneliness.

Maybe, it is just enough to believe with a positive heart that people didn’t let you down. It could be just this: They couldn’t give you the compassion you really wanted based on where their heart is right now. Maybe, not now, but years later they will catch the memory of you in a quiet moment. There on that Sunday morning, a light will shine through the fog of lies, misunderstanding and frustration they built inside their angry mind about your true character. And, when it does, the shadows will be casted out to reveal a scared and hurt little boy or girl that just wanted to be loved, but went about it all wrong. Maybe, on that day, the whisper of their gratitude for your love will find its way back to your heart. And when that day comes, you will find yourself smiling all day long and not know why.

Diversity of character is due to the unequal time given to values. Only through each other will we see the importance of the qualities we lack and our unfinished soul's potential.

Don't waste your time trying to provide people with proof of deceit, in order to keep their love, win their love or salvage their respect for you. The truth is this: If they care they will go out of their way to learn the truth. If they don't then they really don't value you as a human being. The moment you have to sell people on who you are is the moment you let yourself believe that every good thing you have ever done or accomplished was invisible to the world. And, it is not!

When you don’t have honesty in love then there is no communication. Honesty is improvisation of the heart; anything less is a well thought out and rehearsed script.

There comes a time in your life when you can no longer put off choosing. You have to choose one path or the other. You can live safe and be protected by people just like you, or you can stand up and be a leader for what is right. Always, remember this: People never remember the crowd; they remember the one person that had the courage to say and do what no one would do.

Your actions will always be what the world sees, but people who choose to see through God's eyes will always have the compassion to understand why.

I read the story of Red Riding Hood today. I think the wolf was the most interesting character in it. Red Riding Hood was a stupid little thing so easily fooled.

We are all good friends. Friendship is what endures. Shared ideals, respect for the whole character of a human being.

Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.

No two persons can learn something and experience it in the same way.

God has a way of picking a “nobody” and turning their world upside down, in order to create a “somebody” that will remove the obstacles they encountered out of the pathway for others.

Anyone can possess, anyone can profess, but it is an altogether different thing to confess.

I'd never known that I could feel this broken and whole at once.

The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members die, senility sets in when your older, but the ability to make you giggle every day is the most precious gift God can give you to get through all of it.

Words only reveal half of your heart. Service defines the other half. Character is the combination of the two.

I didn’t have anyone, but every time I walked through those doors I felt like each of those authors was my family and the characters they created were all my friends. I counted on them. They were all I ever had. All I still have. Now that the store may go out of business I feel like I’m losing my family and friends. I love all my books. Being a book lover saved my life.

All the children seem to be coming out quite intelligent, thank goodness. It would have been such a bore to be the mother of morons, and it’s an absolute toss-up, isn’t it? If one could only invent them, like characters in books, it would be much more satisfactory to a well-regulated mind.

Heroes are not made. They are born out of circumstances and rise to the occasion when their spirit can no longer coexist with the hypocrisy of injustice to others.

The courage to live brings its own rewards.

More often than not, people who are obsessed with their desires and feelings are generally unhappier in life vs. people that refocus their attention on service to others or a righteous cause. Have you ever heard someone say their life sucked because they fed the homeless? Made their children laugh? Or, bought a toy for a needy child at Christmas time?

Boy, the solid things you can hold in your hands are never all you've got. They're the least of what belong to you. The qualities inside you, those are what you've really got to defend yourself with.

The day you find out who you are is when you look back and realize that it was never the words, rather your actions that defined you.

No matter what, I would never let the people who wanted me to break see how much damage they had inflicted.

In reading we must become creators. Once the child has learned to read alone, and can pick up a book without illustrations, he must become a creator, imagining the setting of the story, visualizing the characters, seeing facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voices. The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words.

I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.

In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.' I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.

There were times in school when a person had to do things fast, cheap, and without character.

People that hold onto hate for so long do so because they want to avoid dealing with their pain. They falsely believe if they forgive they are letting their enemy believe they are a doormat. What they don’t understand is hatred can’t be isolated or turned off. It manifests in their health, choices and belief systems. Their values and religious beliefs make adjustments to justify their negative emotions. Not unlike malware infesting a hard drive, their spirit slowly becomes corrupted and they make choices that don’t make logical sense to others. Hatred left unaddressed will crash a person’s spirit. The only thing he or she can do is to reboot, by fixing him or herself, not others. This might require installing a firewall of boundaries or parental controls on their emotions. Regardless of the approach, we are all connected on this "network of life" and each of us is responsible for cleaning up our spiritual registry.

If it were true love, he would never make you sacrifice your dignity to be with him. He would respect you and treat you as if you were sacred to his heart. If he loved you as dearly as he professes to love Christ, then he would never let anyone that loved him suffer or lower their self worth to be with him. True love is compassion, respect and honorable acts that prove love.

A man of worth is a man that sees the worth in others more than himself.

I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.

Decisions of character come from understanding that they are accountable to God only, not to family, spouses, religious leaders, corporations, public opinion or your own ego.

Never stand in the way of letting God use people’s actions, in order to solve a greater issue in the world.

You might lose battles in your life time. However, every person that stands bravely on the side of justice, for people that have no voice, wins the true battle---Gods.

Don't do the right thing for the wrong reasons. It is the "why" that keeps us committed to our choices and defines our character.

Sometimes the reason God doesn't show up to win your battles is because he already put inside of you the power to end it.

I've learned to let my characters speak and act the way they want to! I've tried to interfere but they just get angry at me and throw big rocks.

...ending a book with a sequel in such a way that the reader still has faith in the characters and in the writer. That's finesse.

A good character is something you must make for yourself. It cannot be inherited from parents. It cannot be created by having extraordinary advantages. It isn't a gift of birth, wealth, talent or station. It is the result of your own endeavor. It is the reward that comes from living good principles and manifesting a virtuous and honorable life.

Courage is God's way of testing the virtues you profess to have and your level of commitment to everything you think you are.

Anyone can say 'I love you', however so many other sayings carry more weight in a relationship: “I understand what you went through because I went through it too.” “I believe you and in you.” “I see the pain you are going through and we will conquer this together.” “I don’t want to change you. I just want to help you become the best version of yourself.” “You matter to me, therefore I will be there for you always.” "I will never keep things from you because you have my respect and friendship. If I find out someone is putting you down, I will stand up for you. ” “Your character will always shine when I speak about you because to damage your name is to damage ours.” “I will go to the ends of the earth to save you from yourself or others.” “What you have to say is important to me because I see you’re hurting and that hurts me, so I am going to listen. Together we will solve this problem.” “I don’t care about your past. That was yesterday. Today, we are going to start over because people make mistakes, but they don’t have to pay for them for the rest of their life.” "How can I help you get through this?" “In sickness or in health...I meant it and I will search the world to find a way to keep you in it because you mean that much to me.” “I don’t want to be your parent. I want to be your best friend, lover, cheering section, playmate and fill all the important parts of your soul. Together we will fill the rest as equals.

If you don’t know what you value in life, then you won’t be able to make any meaningful decisions you can live with in the future.

I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in which he believes. It is the favorite argument of those who believe that only the end matters, not the means.

If you want to be free to serve Jesus, there’s no question—stay single. Marriage takes a lot of time. But if you want to become more like Jesus, I can’t imagine any better thing to do than to get married. Being married forces you to face some character issues you’d never have to face otherwise.

Valor represents bravery and strength of character, boldness, and fortitude - all qualities that prepare a person to act responsibly in times of need, of challenge, or of danger.

It is through strength of character, not luck, do we form the predictable path of our future.

Some women don't care what you can do for them. They care about what you could make of them in the inside.

Sometimes you have to look past a person’s mistakes to see God’s presence.

Who are we without our addictions; without our media-induced hungers? So often the voices we hear echoing in our mind are not our own but that of our influencers. Isolation, while arguably going against human nature, is essential for mental and emotional health. Solitude is a detoxification of all that distorts our personality and misguides our path in life. It allows us to filter out the foreign opinions and hear our own voice—reach our authentic character—and practice fidelity to self.

The only love you have to prove in life is your love of God and helping others. Anyone that can't see that has proven themselves to be unworthy of your time because why would you spend your life with someone that can't tell the difference between a diamond and dirt?

If you choose to do the right thing, it's a conscious decision at first. Then it becomes second nature. You don't have to think about what is right because doing the right thing becomes who you are, like a reflex. Your actions with time become your character

But -- my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything -- and he is -- THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is the use of anything? ... I am absolutely shattered by this Balliol business. Such waste -- why couldn't he have been an actor?

The actions of our closest friends say a lot about our character—what we overlook, what we contribute to and what is important to us when the world doesn’t take notice.

Despite our disapproval with what God allows us to endure, he still remains the same God that is not interested in our convenience, as much as our character.

We can’t see the true characters of those who lurk in the shade until they are exposed to the light…

Live in such a way that when you die you leave God in your will for your children.

How you correct your mistakes will define your character and commitment to a higher power.

Shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. They swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. It’s not melodrama, though, they’re not exaggerating. Every moment is crucial.

It is a wonderful thing to be liked by a stranger, but without respect it is pointless. It is like pulling the pedals off a rose and throwing the stem at the person you like. It’s creepy, but had good intentions that suddenly experienced some strange form of verticillium wilt, during the climate change of their mood.

It is not your beauty, success or money that should define you; neither should your church calling, your charitable contributions or talents. Humility is the cornerstone of character, by which God judges our truth worth, and wisdom is the door he opens when we use it.

Years ago I predicted that these suffragettes, tried out by victory, would turn out to be idiots. They are now hard at work proving it. Half of them devote themselves to advocating reforms, chiefly of a sexual character, so utterly preposterous that even male politicians and newspaper editors laugh at them; the other half succumb absurdly to the blandishments of the old-time male politicians, and so enroll themselves in the great political parties. A woman who joins one of these parties simply becomes an imitation man, which is to say, a donkey.

Strength of character comes from being hit by stray verbal stones, while protecting discarded ciphers in the snow.

…I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.

INTUITION (L. intueri, ‘to look at or into’). I regard intuition as a basic psychological function (q.v.). It is the function that mediates perceptions in an unconscious way. Everything, whether outer or inner objects or their relationships, can be the focus of this perception. The peculiarity of intuition is that it is neither sense perception, nor feeling, nor intellectual inference, although it may also appear in these forms. In intuition a content presents itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence. Intuition is a kind of instinctive apprehension, no matter of what contents. Like sensation (q.v.), it is an irrational (q.v.) function of perception. As with sensation, its contents have the character of being “given,” in contrast to the “derived” or “produced” character of thinking and feeling (qq.v.) contents. Intuitive knowledge possesses an intrinsic certainty and conviction, which enabled Spinoza (and Bergson) to uphold the scientia intuitiva as the highest form of knowledge. Intuition shares this quality with sensation (q.v.), whose certainty rests on its physical foundation. The certainty of intuition rests equally on a definite state of psychic “alertness” of whose origin the subject is unconscious.

I’ve read The Awakening a million times, but I find it comforting. My favorite character is the lady in black who follows Edna and Robert everywhere. I also love the book because I’m so much like Edna—nothing satisfies me, nothing makes me happy. I want too much out of life. I want to take it in my hands and squeeze and twist as much as I can from it. And it’s never enough.

Ending a series is a difficult one .......where should a story that you have followed for so long end? When do you step away from the characters and let the readers decide their fate from there? When they can stand on their own is my only answer for that.

If all you do is set goals and achieve them then you have learned to be a doer. Happiness isn’t at the end of the next goal. It is the journey of aligning your choices to mold your character into the type of person who lives their belief system, then creates a life purpose that reflects that same person.

I enter the world called real as one enters a mist. Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them. I don't want to go on playing in a world where everyone cheats. Where everyone cheats - not only men and women, but sometimes even God.

Can I help you?" said Jane. Though Jane herself had no inkling of it, those words were the keynote of her character. Any one else would probably have said, "What is the matter?" But Jane always wanted to help: and, though she was too young to realize it, the tragedy of her little existence was that nobody ever wanted her help.

Everyone’s life is an evolution of emotions, spirit and beliefs. The storyline changes, plots thicken, main characters mature and new spiritual journeys begin. This is true of inspirational authors. Their books represent only the stages of their life. New triumphs of the soul have yet to be written!

I nuzzle up against him, eyes closed, my nose at his throat, drinking in his sexy Christian-and-spiced-musky bodywash fragrance, my head on his shoulder. I let my mind drift, and I allow myself to fantasize that he loves me. Oh, and it's so real, tanglible almost, and a small part of my nasty harpy subconscious acts completely out of character and dares to hope.

You can't fight mental health bias if you label people based on a lists of symptoms and you have no medical degree to diagnose people. We all have crazy running through our blood and so many things trigger that. We all struggle with our anxiety and twisted issues. Defamation of character is not kind, nor Christlike. Because when you label people with self righteous vindication you open the door to the very idea that self righteousness is itself a disorder that we should all be afraid of. This doorway when left open too long gets people to pull away from Christ, not run to him.

The saddest thing you can do as a human is to discuss one person with another for the sake of it. The unkindest thing you can do to a human is to tarnish their reputation in front of others just to make yourself look good. An unfortunate thing that you can do to a person is to be unapologetically direct and not understand their side. However, the WORST thing you can do is to slip in ‘little’ white lies just to save yourself from confrontations & emotional conversations. Complain about each other to each other. Have your freedom … G E N T L Y. Discuss your mind – politely.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you were wrong? Maybe, you only saw your point of view and you never once put yourself in the other person's shoes. Maybe, walking away from the senseless drama and spiteful criticism isn't the best thing to do. Maybe, for just once in your life you could wear another person's confusion, pain or misunderstanding. Maybe, your future doesn't require explaining yourself or offering an explanation for your indifference, but your character and reputation does. What if one day you find out that you didn't have all the information you thought you did? What if you find out that your presence was needed for healing? What if you only knew half of it and the other half was just your fear and anger translating everything you experienced? What if you were wrong? What if the same thing happened to you?

Breyona didn’t have to force a laugh. “Fellowship? Who do you think you are? Freedo the hobbit?” “It’s Frodo,” he said over his shoulder. “And if I was a character from L.O.T.R., I’d obviously by Strider.” Shaking his head, he continued down the trail, mumbling obscenities. “What is L.O.T.R.?” Shiv asked. “Who is this Freedo?” Both questions brought exasperated sighs from Bronson. “It stands for Lord of the Rings. Don’t you ever see any movies?” “Weren’t they books before they were movies?” Em asked. “They wrote them after,” Bronson said. Breyona winked at Danny. “That Freedo was hot,” she said loud enough for Bronson to hear. “Even with those dumb-ass furry feet, he’s my kind of cute.” Bronson threw his hands up. “Frodo. It’s Frodo. And he’s not hot!

There’s a moment in [Anne of Green Gables] where Anne Shirley (great character) […] is in the same classroom as Gilbert Blythe and she hit’s him over the head with a slate, which is their kind of writing tool, and I always say that moment for me was just, I was just absolutely mesmerised. I thought it was so romantic, though she hated his guts. I would always say that in every one of my novels there is a moment where my characters metaphorically hit their potential love interests over the head with a slate. It could be that winning an argument or getting the upper hand, an example in say The Piper’s Son could be here’s Tom thinking it will be easy, text messaging Tara saying ‘How’s it going, babe’ and her response, that for me is the hitting someone over the head with a slate. It happens in Saving Francesca when she kind of meets Will and Will’s such a bastard to her. So they’re moments I kind of adopted and I loved that particular one, so I would say [L.M. Montgomery] was a major influence.

Teenage Turn-Ons As played by Robert Pattinson in the Twilight Saga movies, Edward has a certain physical sex appeal thanks in part to the the actor's handsome features. but the appeal in both the movies and the novels has nothing to do with a bad-boy energy that so often translates into sexiness because, really, even when he's full-out vamp, there isn't that much of a bad boy to be found in his character. Curiously, the sexiness of the vampire Edward comes from his safeness. He is the ultimate fantasy man. Described in overly ripe prose, his physical perfection is glorious. He might be a little cool to the touch-but gosh! Look at him! He's youthful, with a perfect body, or the sort of man found in the pages of a million romance novels. And most important, he will do what ever it takes to keep his beloved Bella safe, whether the danger comes from the world or himself.

Might not certain vices have the same relation to character that the rigidity of a fixed idea as to intellect? Whether as a moral kink or a crooked twist given to the will, vice has often the appearance of a curvature for the soul. Doubtless there are vices into which the soul plunges deeply with all its pregnant potency, which it rejuvenates and drags along with it into a moving circle of reincarnations. Those are tragic vices. But the vice capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later in the concluding section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely incorporates them that the person is forgotten, their general characteristics effaced, and we no longer think of them at all, but rather of the person in whom they are assimilated; hence, the title of a drama can seldom be anything else than a proper noun. On the other hand, many comedies have a common noun as their title: L'Avare, Le Joueur etc.

To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I've left my teens behind me forever," said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party. "I suppose you feel kind of sorry," said Aunt Jamesina. "The teens are such a nice part of life. I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself." Anne laughed. "You never will, Aunty. You'll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws." "So's everybody's," said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. "Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don't worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That's my philosophy and it's always worked pretty well.

It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own. It constitutes for them a creature somehow interposed between themselves and the great flow of cosmic events, and they look to it to think for them and to protect them. In democratic countries it is theoretically their agent, but there seems to be a strong tendency to convert the presumably free citizen into its agent, or at all events, its client. This exalted view of its scope, character, powers and autonomy is fundamentally false. A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men…. Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general, have come to a degree of puissance in the world that is unchallenged by that of any other group. Their fiats, however preposterous, are generally obeyed as a matter of duty, they are assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom, and the lives of multitudes are willingly sacrificed in their interest.

Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried - "My heart will break!" What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, "Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept. "Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame Beck. To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - "Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving. "Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke. "But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman - "Sortez d'ici!" "I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she threatened pertinaciously. "Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, "Femme! sortez à l'instant!" He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt. "What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; "it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character." "You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, "but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less fiercely, "be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!" This time, in the "leave me" there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second. The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death. "It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he. "It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said.

A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us, as now... ...that the names of all the men eligible in each assembly district be put into a hat (or, if no hat can be found that is large enough, into a bathtub), and that a blind moron, preferably of tender years, be delegated to draw out one... The advantages that this system would offer are so vast and obvious that I hesitate to venture into the banality of rehearsing them. It would in the first place, save the commonwealth the present excessive cost of elections, and make political campaigns unnecessary. It would in the second place, get rid of all the heart-burnings that now flow out of every contest at the polls, and block the reprisals and charges of fraud that now issue from the heart-burnings. It would, in the third place, fill all the State Legislatures with men of a peculiar and unprecedented cast of mind – men actually convinced that public service is a public burden, and not merely a private snap. And it would, in the fourth and most important place, completely dispose of the present degrading knee-bending and trading in votes, for nine-tenths of the legislators, having got into office unwillingly, would be eager only to finish their duties and go home, and even those who acquired a taste for the life would be unable to increase the probability, even by one chance in a million, of their reelection. The disadvantages of the plan are very few, and most of them, I believe, yield readily to analysis. Do I hear argument that a miscellaneous gang of tin-roofers, delicatessen dealers and retired bookkeepers, chosen by hazard, would lack the vast knowledge of public affairs needed by makers of laws? Then I can only answer (a) that no such knowledge is actually necessary, and (b) that few, if any, of the existing legislators possess it... Would that be a disservice to the state? Certainly not. On the contrary, it would be a service of the first magnitude, for the worst curse of democracy, as we suffer under it today, is that it makes public office a monopoly of a palpably inferior and ignoble group of men. They have to abase themselves to get it, and they have to keep on abasing themselves in order to hold it. The fact reflects in their general character, which is obviously low. They are men congenitally capable of cringing and dishonorable acts, else they would not have got into public life at all. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule among them, but how many? What I contend is simply that the number of such exceptions is bound to be smaller in the class of professional job-seekers than it is in any other class, or in the population in general. What I contend, second, is that choosing legislators from that populations, by chance, would reduce immensely the proportion of such slimy men in the halls of legislation, and that the effects would be instantly visible in a great improvement in the justice and reasonableness of the laws.

Era vestito completamente di nero e con una eleganza che non era abituale fra i filibustieri del grande Golfo del Messico, uomini che si accontentavano di un paio di calzoni e d'una camicia, e che curavano più le loro armi che gli indumenti. [...] Anche l'aspetto di quell'uomo aveva, come il vestito, qualcosa di funebre, con quel volto pallido, quasi marmoreo, che spiccava stranamente fra le nere trine del colletto e le larghe tese del cappello, adorno d'una barba corta, nera, tagliata alla nazzarena un po' arricciata. Aveva però i lineamenti bellissimi: un naso regolare, due labbra piccole e rosse come il corallo, una fronte ampia solcata da una leggera ruga che dava a quel volto un non so che di malinconico, due occhi poi neri come carbonchi, d'un taglio perfetto, dalle ciglia lunghe, vivide e animate da un lampo tale che in certi momenti doveva sgomentare anche i più intrepidi filibustieri di tutto il golfo. La sua statura alta, slanciata, il suo portamento elegante, le sue mani aristocratiche, lo facevano conoscere, anche a prima vista, per un uomo d'alta condizione sociale e soprattutto per un uomo abituato al comando.

Quest'uomo, meglio conosciuto sotto il nome di Tigre della Malesia, che da dieci anni insanguinava le coste del mar malese, poteva avere trentadue o trentaquattro anni. Era alto di statura, ben fatto, con muscoli forti come se fili d'acciaio vi fossero stati intrecciati, dai lineamenti energici, l'anima inaccessibile a ogni paura, agile come una scimmia, feroce come la tigre delle jungla malesi, generoso e coraggioso come il leone dei deserti africani. Aveva una faccia leggermente abbronzata e di una bellezza incomparabile, resa truce da una barba nera, con una fronte ampia, incorniciata da fuligginosi e ricciuti capelli che gli cavedano con pittoresco disordine sulle robuste spalle. Due occhi di una fulgidezza senza pari, che magnetizzavano, attiravano, che ora diventavano melanconici come quelli di una fanciulla, e che ora lampeggiavano e schizzavano come fiamme. Due labbra sottili, particolari agli uomini energici, dalle quali, nei momenti di battaglia, usciva una voce squillante, metallica, che dominava il rombo dei cannoni, e che talvolta si piegavano a un melanconico sorriso, che a poco a poco diventava un sorriso beffardo fino al punto di trovare il sorriso della Tigre della Malesia, quasi assaporasse allora il sangue umano. Da dove mai era uscito questo terribile uomo, che alla testa di duecento tigrotti, non meno intrepidi di lui, aveva saputo in poco volger d'anni farsi una fama sì funesta? Nessuno lo avrebbe potuto dire. I suoi fidi stessi lo ignoravano, come ignoravano pure chi egli fosse.