We’re not savages. We’re English.
WILLIAM GOLDINGWe’re not savages. We’re English.
WILLIAM GOLDINGTogether, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
WILLIAM GOLDINGWhich is better — to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better — to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
WILLIAM GOLDINGRalph… would treat the day’s decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
WILLIAM GOLDINGPhilosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
WILLIAM GOLDINGI will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHe doesn’t mind if he dies… indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it.
WILLIAM GOLDINGTowards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHow can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
WILLIAM GOLDINGOne tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
WILLIAM GOLDINGThere is, they say, no fool like an old fool.
WILLIAM GOLDINGChildhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of.
WILLIAM GOLDINGMaybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
WILLIAM GOLDINGThe trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
WILLIAM GOLDINGNothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don’t understand.
WILLIAM GOLDING