“Alexander offered him (Aristotle)a hand to mount the gangplank, andtried the effect of a smile. When the man returned it, it could be seen thatsmiling was what he would do best; he would not often be caught withhis head back laughing. But he did look like a man who would answerquestions.”
“He could not change the man he had been, but these hands would make him the man he could be”
“I would like to turn the Kaiser into a good man – a very good man – all at once if I could. That is what I would do. Don't you think, Mrs. Blythe, that would be the very worstest punishment of all?""Bless the child," said Susan, "how do you make out that would be any kind of a punishment for that wicked fiend?""Don't you see," said Bruce, looking levelly at Susan, out of his blackly blue eyes, "if he was turned into a good man he would understand how dreadful the things he has done are, and he would feel so terrible about it that he would be more unhappy and miserable than he could ever be in any other way. He would feel just awful – and he would go on feeling like that forever. Yes" – Bruce clenched his hands and nodded his head emphatically, "yes, I would make the Kaiser a good man – that is what I would do – it would serve him 'zackly right.”
“He was acting like the man he wanted to be, in hopes that he could become him. He would keep acting until he couldn't stand it anymore, and then he would be the man he was.”
“What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring?What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull?”
“Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around, and what to him, within the vision of his life, is the greatest and the best, that he falls down and does reverence to.”