We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

But responsibility hardens the heart. It must.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

He thought he suddenly understood. For the Lincon-shire sergeant-major the word Peace meant that a man could stand up on a hill. For him it meant someone to talk to.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.

The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things.