As to honour — you know — it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs. - Joseph Conrad

Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,

And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretence but an idea: and an unselfish belief in the idea — something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...