Caleb

You're not clever. You don't know what you want. You have no proper fierceness. You let other people walk over you. Sometimes I think you're a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it's true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the trouble of hurting you?

It's me should be where you are and you here.

Mr. Edwards had never experienced such misery. As a matter of business he had learned so much about women that he did not trust one for a second. And since he deeply loved Catherine and love requires trust, he was torn to quivering fragments by his emotion.

Samuel raised a distinctly superior breed. They were better read and better bred than most of their contemporaries. To all of them Samuel communicated his love of learning and he set them apart from the prideful ignorance of their time.

'There's a capacity for appetite,' Samuel said, 'that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy'

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.

'I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.'

Then he saw the faraway joyous look on his father's face and a shiver of shared delight came to him. The Hamilton children loved it when their father's mind went free. Then the world was peopled with wonders.

On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other --cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.

'I don't very much believe in blood,' said Samuel. 'I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.'

That's exactly right. She most of all would disagree, and so I would not say it to her and let loose the thunder of her disagreement. She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront. She's a fine woman, but you have to learn to feel your way with her.

I take a pleasure into inquiring into things. I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it.

And I here make a rule --a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange foreign is not interesting --only the deeply personal and familiar.

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt --and there is the story of mankind.

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed --because 'Thou mayest.'

you should have sat through some of those nights of argument and discussion. the questions, the inspection, oh, the lovely thinking --the beautiful thinking.

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

'Thou mayest rule over sin' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. it is true of the spirit as it is true of battles --only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness.

All things come to men who know. Yes, I'm a believer in the torch of learning.

There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. the storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

I know that sometimes a lie used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. the quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. that's a running sore.

'I was afraid I had you in me'
'You have,' said Kate
'No, I haven't. I'm my own. I don't have t be you.'
'How do you know that?' she demanded.
'I just know. It just came to me whole. If I'm mean, it's my own mean.'

'I think I love you, Cal.'
'I'm not good.'
'Because you're not good.'

He wanted the story and he wanted it to come out his way. he couldn't stand to have it come out any other way.