Fifth Business Quotes
"Our sense is nothing to God's; and though big people have more sense than children, the sense of all the big people in the world put together would be no sense to His."
"He does not always answer in the way we would like, but in some better way than we know."
"People would not be so cruel to Him now. Queen Victoria would not allow anyone to crucify Him."
"A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, he is also schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain—in short, a man."
"But it was not easy to explain that I was not playing but demonstrating a fascinating and involved science."
"It was necessary for me to gain power in some realm into which my parents—my mother particularly—could not follow me."
"I was most hurt that Dempster had dragged down my conjuring to mere cheating and gambling; it had seemed to me to be a splendid extension of life, a creation of a world of wonder, that hurt nobody."
"The poor soul dearly loves to give, and it would be wicked to deny her. The pity is that more people with more to give don't feel the same way."
"But if Mrs. Dempster was lost at night, all daylight considerations must be set aside."
"Certainly that cast of mind had some of its origin in our pit, which had much the character of a Protestant Hell."
"I was probably the most entranced listener to a sermon the Reverend Andrew Bowyer preached about Gehenna."
"Under the direction of Jim Warren and Mr. Mahaffey it was agreed that fifteen of us would scramble down into the pit."
"I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear."
"He was very civil, 'Masa. And he wanted it so badly."
"It was useless to explain that I read it not from zeal but curiosity."
"Here am I, being decorated as a hero, and in the eyes of everybody here I am indeed a hero; but I know that my heroic act was rather a dirty job I did when I was dreadfully frightened."
"War puts men in situations where these things happen."
"I had lost all nerve long before. Now, as the last of the flare hissed towards me, I lost consciousness."
"I knew she had eaten my father, and I was glad I did not have to fight any longer to keep her from eating me."
"What is truth? as Pilate asked; I've never pretended that I could have told him."
"God has to be served, and I must use the means I know."
"If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get."
"You educated people, you have a craze for what you call truth, by which you mean police-court facts."
"We come to God in little steps, not in a leap, and that love of police-court truth you think so much of comes very late on the way, if it comes at all."
"Throw out the Life Line, someone is drifting away."
"I am not a gifted speaker or a man of education and often my stories come out thin and old, and I suppose unbelievable to a man like you."
"Forgive yourself for being a human creature, Ramezay. That is the beginning of wisdom; that is part of what is meant by the fear of God; and for you it is the only way to save your sanity."
"Life itself is too great a miracle for us to make so much fuss about potty little reversals of what we pompously assume to be the natural order."
"Trust your own judgement. That is what you Protestants made such a dreadful fuss to assert your right to do."
"Miracles are things people cannot explain. Miracles depend much on time, and place, and what we know and do not know."
"Mankind cannot endure perfection; it stifles him. He demands that even the saints should cast a shadow."
"Begin now, or you will end up with your saint in the madhouse."
"Every day in every way you do get better and better, in whatever sense you understand the word 'better', because that's the kind of person you are."
"I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger."
"Sometimes I wonder why so few saints were also wise. Some were, of course, but more were downright pig-headed."
"You must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost."
"Life is a spectator sport to you. Now you have taken a tumble and found yourself in the middle of the fight, and you are whimpering because it is rough."
"Why don't you, just for once, do something inexplicable, irrational, at the devil's bidding, and just for the hell of it?"
"I think you are Fifth Business. You don't know what that is? Well, in opera in a permanent company... you must have Fifth Business because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex."
"That is the revenge of the unlived life, Ramsay. Suddenly it makes a fool of you."
"You are a decent chap to everybody, except one special somebody, and that is Dunstan Ramsay."
"How can you be really good to anybody if you are not good to yourself?"
"But every man has a devil, and a man of unusual quality, like yourself, Ramsay, has an unusual devil."
"But I felt fine. I felt better than I had done for a very long time."
"Forgive my ill manners of last night. Love conquers all and youth must be served."
"One always learns one's mystery at the price of one's innocence."
"I have always been meaning to put them in some proper place, but I haven't found it yet."
"We all forget many of the things we do, especially when they do not fit into the character we have chosen for ourselves."
"People like to be in awe of something, you know."
"Heroism in God's cause is the mark of the saint, not conjuring tricks."
"I cannot feel guilt now. But I can call up in an instant what it felt like to be the child of a woman everybody jeered at."
"We've both done far more important things since."
"The stone-in-the-snowball has been characteristic of too much you've done for you to forget it forever!"
"I'm simply trying to recover something of the totality of your life. Don't you want to possess it as a whole—the bad with the good?"
"We get the women we deserve, King Candaules."