“He may think it unwise to be detailed in self-justification.”
“That is all well enough, and so far I am with you. In such circumstances, one doesn't want to tell a lie, and yet one doesn't want to tell the truth.”
“Well, there are many duties and difficulties in life: there is but one obligation—courage.”
He fixed his eyes on the fire blazing in the grate, and repeated the word with great emphasis—“Courage!”
“He will need it. An unpleasant suggestion has been put forward by the lawyers.”
“Divorce?” said Disraeli.
“Yes.”
“A Bishop was telling me the other day that when one attacks the principle of divorce one forgets that it was originally a Divine institution! But I agree with you—it is unpleasant. You will find that Orange won't hear of such a course. I see great dangers ahead for him, but I see no honourable way of avoiding them. When a man, careless of danger, unconcerned with profit, takes up the cause of God against the world, others may not follow, but they must admire him. Abstract sentiments of virtue do not charm me. Orange is a Roman Catholic, however, and therefore a practical idealist. The practical idealists of England are the Dissenters—mostly the Methodists. John Wesley was considered crack-brained by his contemporaries at Oxford; he was a greater mystic, in several ways, than Newman, but he was not such a poet.”
“I know nothing about Dissenters and that class. As for the Catholics—the few I am acquainted with are civil and sensible.”