The Gadfly

The longer a thing is to take doing, the more reason to begin at once

We are all fit for better things than we ever do

It matters just as much what to do, whether people hate you or love you

Do you think you didn’t hurt the man you killed?

Oh, yet come back, come back to me, beloved; for I repent me of my choice! Come back, and we will creep away together, to some dark and silent grave where the devouring army shall not find us; and we will lay us down there, locked in one another's arms, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

I believed in you as I believed in God. God is a thing made of clay, that I can smash with a hammer; and you have fooled me with a lie.

And the natural result was that I got a dip into the real hell to cure me of imagining sham ones.

Has it never occurred to you that that miserable clown may have a soul–a living, struggling human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tender-hearted to everything–you that pity the body in its fool’s dress and bells–have you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and misery, before all those people–feeling their jeers that cut like a whip–their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it looking round–so helpless before them all–for the mountains that will not fall on it–for the rocks that have not the heart to cover it–envying the rats that can creep into some hole in the earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb–it has no voice to cry out–it must endure, and endure, and endure.

A stone in the path may have the best intentions, but it must be kicked out of the path, for all that.

The training of children is such a serous thing, and it means so much to them to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should have thought the holier a man`s vocation and the purer his life, the more fit he is to be a father

What is the use of vows? They are not what binds people. If you feel in a certain way about a thing, that binds you to it". ''Ràng buộc con người không phải là lời thề. Chỉ cần mình tự cảm thấy thiết tha với một điều nào đó, thế là đủ rồi'' (Vietnamese)

[...] But the deadliest weapon I know is ridicule. If you can once succeed in rendering the Jesuits ludicrous, in making people laugh at them and their claims, you have conquered them without bloodshed.

Most of us are degraded in one way or another.

If you are going to say a thing the substance of which is a big pill for your readers to swallow, there is no use in frightening them at the beginning by the form.

He says things which need saying and which none of us have had the courage to say. This passage, where he compares Italy to a tipsy man weeping with tenderness on the neck of the thief who is picking his pocket, is splendidly written.

On and on he wandered, and came out upon the sea-shore, on the barren rocks where the fierce light struck down, and the water moaned its low, perpetual wail of unrest. "Ah!" he said; "the sea will be more merciful; it, too, is wearied unto death and cannot sleep." Then Arthur rose up from the deep, and cried aloud: "This sea is mine!

You have brought out the awkward squad this morning, colonel! Let me see if I can manage them better. Now, men! Hold your tool higher there, you to the left. Bless your heart, man, it's a carbine you've got in your hand, not a fryingpan! Are you all straight? Now then! Ready present "Fire!" the colonel interrupted, starting forward. It was intolerable that this man should give the command for his own death.

We atheists understand that if a man has a thing to bear, he must bear it as best he can; and if he sinks under it– why, so much the worse for him.

I have only one offering to give, a broken heart.

Life would be unendurable without quarrels. A good quarrel is the salt of the earth; it’s better than a variety show!

As a literary composition, it is utterly worthless, and could be admired only by persons who know nothing about literature. As for its giving offence, that is the very thing I intended it to do.

I quite agree with you that it is detestably malicious. But the worst thing about it is that it’s all true.

The bad principle is that any man should hold over another the power to bind and loose. It’s a false relationship to stand in towards one’s fellows

I don’t know what he means, but there’s something not clean about a man who sneers at everything.

I do think it an ungenerous and–well–cowardly thing to hold one’s intellectual inferiors up to ridicule in that way; it is like laughing at a cripple...

What I see, Padre? I see a great, white being in a blue void that has no beginning and no end. I see it waiting, age after age, for the coming of the Spirit of God. I see it through a glass darkly.