Quotes About Responsibility

I reread this letter several times. I could scarcely deny its authorship or its ugliness. All I could plead was that I had been its author then, but was not its author now. Indeed, I didn't recognise that part of myself from which the letter came. But perhaps this was simply further self-deception.

A woman's right to choose — yes, I believed in that, theoretically and actually. Though I also believed in a man's right to be consulted.

Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can't change.

The times we did, I would be hit by a sense of what I can only call pre-guilt: the expectation that she was going to say or do something that would make me feel properly guilty.

But time … how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time … give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

Dingen die eenmaal weg zijn, kunnen niet teruggehaald worden, dat wist hij nu wel. Een klap, eenmaal uitgedeeld, kan niet worden ingetrokken. Woorden, eenmaal uitgesproken, kunnen niet onuitgesproken worden gemaakt. We mogen verdergaan alsof er niets verloren, niets gedaan, niets gezegd is, we mogen beweren het allemaal te vergeten, maar ons diepste wezen vergeet niet, omdat we voor altijd veranderd zijn.

In the old days, a child might pay for the sins of the father, or indeed mother. Nowadays, in the most advanced society on earth, the parents might pay for the sins of the child, along with uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, colleagues, friends, and even the man who unthinkingly smiled at you as he came out of the lift at three in the morning. The system of retribution had been greatly improved, and was so much more inclusive than it used to be.

Duty done, only child safely seen to the temporary harbour of marriage. Now all you have to do is not get Alzheimer's and remember to leave her such money as you have. And you could try to do better than your parents by dying when the money will actually be of use to her. That'd be a start.

What if Susan, from religious or moral scruple, had discouraged his interest, and taught him nothing more than tactical astuteness when playing mixed doubles? What if Macleod had continued to hold a sexual interest in his wife? None of this might have happened. But given that it had, then if you wanted to attribute fault, you were straight away into prehistory, which now, in two of their three cases, had become inaccessible.

Don't ever have dogs, Paul. They die on you, and then there comes a point when you don't know whether to get one last one or not. One for the road. So here we are, Sibyl and me. Either I'll die and break her heart or she'll die and break mine. Not much of a choice, is

I tried to save her, I failed. I tried to stop her drinking, I failed. I don't blame her, it's way beyond that. And I remember what you told me back then—that she was more likely to get hurt than me. But I can't take it anymore. I can't face another ten days of it, let alone another ten years. So Martha's going to look after her.

He took his own life' is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same?

We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of exonerating individuals.

In the States, the Abdication story, for example, is portrayed as The World Well Lost For Love while the English, of a certain type anyway, see it only as childish, irresponsible and absurd.

Why do we spend so much of our lives making blameless people unhappy?

How little Americans know when they disparage acquaintanceship in favour of real, true friendship. It is in acquaintanceship, bringing with it as it does delicious dinners, comfortable weekends, gossip shared in picturesque surroundings, but no real intimacy, no responsibility, that the greatest charm of social intercourse lies. I am an observer. It troubles me to be forced into the role of participant.

She would certainly allow John to give himself the credit for turning her head and luring her into sin—all men like to feel they are leading the dance—but the truth was that if Susan had not made the decision to go astray, it would not be happening.

Nobody ever told you to expect any more than you were given. There are many men who would think it a fine thing to be a cleric living in a large rectory, without having to do a stroke of work from January to December.

John thought himself irresponsible, but surely women were a safer addiction than gambling.

You're a hero here.' 'I don't want to be a hero.' 'What do you want?' 'I want to be a leader.

Dad was not a religious man, and he once said to me that he didn't think he would believe in God at all were it not for the existence of two things: trees — and man's conscience. He said that without trees, we would not survive on this planet, for they feed us, clothe us, shelter us, make oxygen. Without a conscience, man would probably never have developed beyond a primitive state.

The wrong man could have brought it all crashing down," she told him. "A different man might have collapsed under the weight of the responsibility.

i can only think god is responsible for passion,for god gives us bodies with which to express it and heart in which to hold it

The question remains... who takes care of you, Miss Vale? I might ask the same question of you, Lord Dryden.