A Quote by Lord Byron
A legal broom's a moral chimney-sweeper, And that's the reason he himself's so dirty
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If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.
Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?
'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me.
I quite like convincing the person the broom is their favourite actress. They are talking to a broom and they think it's Julia Roberts and they snog it. In Reading one guy took the broom into the wings and was getting amorous with it. I had a struggle to get it back. He was exhausted when he came out.
How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.
I always say one of the great scenes from 'The Dirty Dozen' is where Jim Brown has to get grenades in the chimney.
A new broom can sweep the floor, but an old broom knows where the dirt is.
It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation.
There's no reason that young girls shouldn't feel like they can't smash people on the field. Nothing dirty. You want to keep it clean. You just want to play hard. Get your jersey dirty, shorts dirty, and just have fun out there.
It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
In separating out, say, legal and moral requirements, I tend to work with paradigms rather than strict divisions - eg, paradigmatically, legal requirements are jurisdictionally bound whereas ethical requirements are aspirationally universal; ethical requirements focus especially on intentions whereas legal requirements focus primarily on conduct; ethical requirements take priority over legal requirements; and so on.
You can be anything you want to be. You can be a street sweeper, if you want. Just be the best blasted street sweeper you can be . . . And, you know you can be mayor.
The choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason; as if man could give reason to himself.
I learned to fly on a broom," he said, rolling up his sleeves. "I can learn to milk a goat, I bet." Though flying on a broom proved to be the easier task, he found.
My gardening apprenticeship was similar to the way a chimney sweep is pushed up a chimney. It was enforced by my parents, non-negotiable - it would be weeding the strawberries, mowing the grass.
I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat - O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then thou should'st see how fat I would be! But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance!
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