As We Are and as We May Be

“I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.””

— Walter Besant

“I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.””

— Walter Besant

“The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.””

— Walter Besant

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.””

— Walter Besant

“But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.””

— Walter Besant

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.””

— Walter Besant

“But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.””

— Walter Besant

“They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.””

— Walter Besant

“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering””

— Walter Besant