“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
Source: The Woman in White
Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
Source: The Woman in White
“Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.”
De toutes les définitions de l'homme, la plus mauvaise me paraît celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable.
Le Petit Pierre (1918), ch. XXXIII
Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789)
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)
Context: But I wonder if people do not attach too much importance to the first-name habit? Every man and woman is a mystery, built like those Chinese puzzles which consist of one box inside another, so that ten or twelve boxes have to be opened before the final solution is found. Not more than two or three people have ever penetrated beyond my outside box, and there are not many people whom I have explored further; if anyone imagines that being on first-name terms with somebody magically strips away all the boxes and reveals the inner treasure he still has a great deal to learn about human nature. There are people, of course, who consist only of one box, and that a cardboard carton, containing nothing at all.
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
On 29 August 1944 during a private conversation with other officers at Trent Park. Randall Hansen says that the veracity of Choltitz's involvement in such massacres is uncertain but that it is possible, even probable, that Choltitz was one of the many German generals who did commit atrocities. Hansen goes on to say the quote was out of context and there has never been any corroborating evidence of Choltitz's involvement in the massacre of Jews.