responsibility Quotes

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

“To have a child is the greatest honor and responsibility that can be bestowed upon any living being.”

“Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.”

“My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.”

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”

I take responsibility for my choices.

Each person is responsible for his or her behavior.

Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away.

“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

“Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less.”

“A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.”

I am a man More sinned against than sinning

“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.”

“In the end, a parent’s responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.”

“Her eyes lingered a moment on Selia, and she found herself thinking, She would be better at playing princess than I am. The thought stung. Ani wanted so badly to do it right, to be regal and clever and powerful. But too often her only truly happy moments were the bursts of freedom, stolen afternoons on her horse’s back, brief, breathtaking rides past the stables to where the gardens turned wild, her lungs stinging with the cold, her muscles trembling with the hard ride.”

“I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologize to anyone injured by my misreckoning.”

“The queen shook her head. ‘You should never have been only a little girl, you should have always been a crown princess.‘”

“Those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies.”

“She wanted to tell them that her mother was sick. That she had to pay the bills. She wanted to explain to them about Abuelita and how she had to find a way to get some money to her so she could travel. Then maybe they’d understand why she needed her job.”

“I heartily accept the motto, — ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.”

“If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”

“It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.”

“She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them. The year before they had spent part of the summer with their grandmother Pontellier in Iberville. Feeling secure regarding their happiness and welfare, she did not miss them except with an occasional intense longing. Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her.”

“Today, I will not wait for others to see and care; I will take responsibility for being aware of my pain and problems, and caring about myself.”

“Well, let me tell you something, Caveman. You are here on account of one person. If it wasn’t for that person, you wouldn’t be here digging holes in the hot sun” […] “That person is you, Stanley. You’re the reason you are here. You’re responsible for yourself. You messed up your life.”

“Only fools want to be great.”

“None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or else because they could not understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way.”

“There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.”

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

“This officer, given maximum power, bore minimum responsibility.”

“And but for ceremony such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the forehand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country’s peace, Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.”

“So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him.”

“I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it, who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.”

“I wonder what it’s like to have that much power over a boy. I don’t think I’d want it; it’s a lot of responsibility to hold a person’s heart in your hands.”

“You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”

“As you perceive, the only person responsible for the couple’s offense escaped; and not only escaped but became the executioner of the innocent.”

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

″‘You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?’ ‘The difference, I said carefully, ‘lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.‘”

“In America—even if the consequences are tragic—you are not responsible for someone else’s safety. You aren’t obligated to help anyone in distress. Not if you’re the one who started the fire, not if you’re a passerby to car wreck, not if you’re a perfectly matched donor.”

“I had a natural talent for selling to people, but without knowledge and resources, where was that going to get me? People always lecture the poor: ‘Take responsibility for yourself! Make something of yourself!’ But with what raw materials are the poor to make something of themselves?”

“For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time.”

“Some people might say, well, what business is it of Frank Ross to meddle? My answer is this: he was trying to do that short devil a good turn. Chaney was a tenant and Papa felt responsibility. He was his brother’s keeper. Does that answer your question?”

We must not expect God to get the devil off our backs. He has already defeated Satan and given us the ability and responsibility to take care of ourselves.

He has already defeated Satan and given us the ability and responsibility to take care of ourselves. This truth is a revelation to many believers —it is good news! No wonder so many prayers have seemed unanswered.

Demons are spiritual enemies and it is the responsibility of each Christian to deal with them directly in spiritual warfare

“And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way.”

″‘Can’t again,’ said Caspian. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘If it please your Majesty, we mean shall not,’ said Reepicheep with a very low bow. ‘You are the King of Narnia. You break faith with all your subjects, and especially with Trumpkin, if you do not return. You shall not please yourself with adventures as if you were a private person. And if your Majesty will not hear reason, it will be the truest loyalty of every man on board to follow me in disarming and binding you till you come to your senses.‘”

“We see this workplace as a community, and every person who works here is part of that community. And to make it all work it requires a certain level of participation.”

“This time round I’m having a baby. A baby. And that baby will be around on the Monday, Tuesday, the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I will have no weekends off. No three-month holidays. I can’t take a day off, call in sick, or get Mum to write a note. I am going to be the Mum now. I wish I could write myself a note.”

“Leadership is not a license to do less; it is a responsibility to do more.”

“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”

“Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.”

“He acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.”

“It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.”

“Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are.”

“Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.”

“Overcome your guilt. Care, but not too much. Take responsibility, but don’t blame yourself. Protect, save, help- but know when to give up. They’re precarious ledges to walk. How do I do it?”

“It’s not up to you to help other people fit you into a box.”

“You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility.”

“The responsibility for finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee, from the most senior manager to the lowliest person on the production line.”

“…It helps to know you’re not any more responsible for how you look than a car is. You’re a product just as much. A product of a product of a product...”

“She had Poppy. She had friends. And she had Mrs. Murdo, who was somewhere between a relative and a friend. But she felt as if she had suddenly gotten older in the last three days. She was sort of a mother herself now. What happened to Poppy was more or less up to her.”

″‘I will take responsibility for what I have done,’ Dalinar whispered. ‘If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.‘”

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant…An elephant’s faithful, one hundred per cent!”

“You alone are responsible for what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you.”

“God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated.”

“Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you.”

“Not the perversities of others, not their sins of commission or omission, but his own misdeeds and negligences should a sage take notice of.”

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”

“A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She’s too pretty.”

“Faith is the substance of whatever it is that we hope for. The important thing is that we teach that faith is connected to good works and responsibility.”

“I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment.”

“Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.”

″ The American system of Government could not function if every man in a position of responsibility approached each problem... as a problem in higher mathematics.”

“A dream requires a partner: commitment.”

“Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ-like, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.”

“Leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance, and develop solutions to those problems.”

“Honey, they’ll be along. You know, it’s a lot of trouble for wives to get out of the house: we’re giving hubby a hand, or waking up a slave, or putting the baby to bed, or bathing it, or feeding it a snack.”

″... no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”

“Cause it’s not your job! Who said it was your responsibility to fix Tony? It’s your job to love him, respect him, and to pray for the man. God knows he needs it. And men don’t like it when their woman’s always trying to fix them.”

“To make anyone answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception.”

“Each is a proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual.”

“It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society;”

“Up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it.”

“The mother is nineteen, but she doesn’t feel that old.”

“So let us pray, not for him but for overselves and for all those whose job it is to wear those great big shoes he left this nation to fill...”

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.”

″...there’s no way of stopping it until you find the person responsible and sack them. If you don’t identify the culprit fairly soon, you’re going to have another year without showing a profit....”

“Until you realize that you are the creators, you will refuse to accept this responsibility. Nor can you blame a devil for the world’s misfortunes.”

“Your suit is your responsibility. It failed. That means you failed.”

“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”

“It’s so much easier to point a finger than to take responsibility yourself, isn’t it? Maybe it isn’t so simple as this person’s fault or that one. Maybe we make up the dance together, as we go along, and no one knows what the result will be.”

“Wasn’t this what he had wanted…from this relationship? To be so indispensable to another person that that person couldn’t even comprehend his life without him? And now he had it, and the demands of the position terrified him. He had asked for responsibility without understanding completely how much damage he could do. Was he able to do this?”

“And once I got old enough for such a thing to be a possibility, he told me that a man must be responsible for any seed he sows, for it’s his duty to take care of a woman and protect her. And if I wasna prepared to do that, then I’d no right to burden a woman with the consequences of my own actions.”

“The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men’s. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. ”

“Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.”

″‘Here it is, Chris, the world is your oyster. It’s up to you to find the pearls.‘”

“Friends will take care of them. That’s what friends do.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Mallard were bursting with pride. It was a great responsibility taking care of so many ducklings, and it kept them very busy.”

“Very well, since you insist... You want a vacation. Go fly off and take it. I’ll sit on your egg and try not to break it. I’ll stay and be faithful. I mean what I say.”

“That word again – responsibility. I’d been hearing it so much lately. From my teachers, from my parents, from everybody. Because I was tall (was that my fault?) and I played footy […] I ended up with all this responsibility. It didn’t seem fair.”

“If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you.”

“I had to cope with her right from when I was little, I looked after her and you. You said yourself she’s better with you.”

“Star always did stuff, cleaned her up and looked after her when she was really bad. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to do anything without Star. She’s not just like my sister. She’s like my mum too. And my best friend. And now she’s walked out on me and I haven’t got anyone.”

Flour Babies centers around Simon Martin, his peers in Form 4C and their experiences of a ‘Child Development’ project, where they each take on the responsibility of a small sack of flour for several weeks.

“Sooner or later, you have to accept that you’re not responsible for other people’s choices. Worse, sometimes you can’t fix what’s wrong with them.”

“Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done. ”

“The first thing was their kindness. How amazingly widespread it was. They had taken responsibility for her, nursed and clothed her. Someone had given up her bed, probably Beatie; no one had complained when she was snappish and rude about Dovey’s best clothes, about the lack of sanitation; no one had condemned her unsympathetic attitude towards Gibbie.”

“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”

“Peak is my son. It’s time I stepped forward and took some responsibility.”

“I’m feeling real bad for her all of a sudden. “If he is mine, you won’t be doing this alone no more, a’ight? I’ll come over and help as much as I can.”

″...the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works, and certain public institutions...”

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”

“You should take responsibility for not just the good stuff, but the bad stuff. I have noticed in leadership, in covering people over and over, it’s the people who are capable of taking ownership over failure, and apologizing very directly for their shortcomings, that succeed.”

“We are each responsible for all our experiences. Every thought we think is creating our future.”

There are a whole series of truly dramatic events (in gerbil terms) for the gerbils when Sid’s ability to keep them is seriously threatened, right up to the end, but all is well in the end and the family dynamics seem to have improved as well.

“I work not only for the gathering and assimilation of knowledge, but also to teach the fact that one can be brilliant without being arrogant, that great intellectual capacity brings great responsibility, that the quest for knowledge should never supplant the joy of learning, that one with great capacities must learn to be tolerant and appreciate those with lesser or different absolutes,”

“My vulnerability is natural and permissible and beautiful to me, and it should remind you of your responsibility to behave like a friend to me and the world.”

“Oldest daughter Charlie struggles to care for her sisters in the wake of the accident that took their parents, while each of the younger sisters narrates a volume of the series.”

“Even potted plants got to be a responsibility, like everything else you took care of that couldn’t make decisions for itself.”

″‘Livi, please, will you sit down?’ Cibi tells her. At seven years old, she is the eldest of the siblings, and it is her responsibility to chastise them when they misbehave.”

“The responsibility he bears for his daughter and grandchildren has aged him beyond his years, and he has no time for intrigue.”

“Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. i suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.”

“There’s a responsibility we have toward animals. We use them. We shut them up, keep their natural food and water away from them; that means we have to feed and water them. Take away their freedom away, rope them, harness them, that means we have to supply a different sort of safety for them. Once I’ve put a rope on a horse, or taken away its ability to take care of itself, then I’ve got to take care of it.”

“In a moment he was Captain John, responsible for his ship and his crew, and Mrs. Dixon, the farmer’s wife, was a native, not wholly to be trusted in spite of her toffee and cake.”

“Though she loved her children, in her practical, unsentimental way, they were to her always “the children”, to be ruled and reared, clothed and educated, but never in any respect her companions.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Mallard were bursting with pride. It was a great responsibility taking care of so many ducklings, and it kept them very busy. She taught them how to swim and dive.”

“We’re going. Only Don’t Blame Me.”

She forgot nothing and, thanks to her, everything that was to be done was done.

“After all,” said Rabbit to himself, “Christopher Robin depends on Me. He’s fond of Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore, and so am I, but they haven’t any Brain. Not to notice. And he respects Owl, because you can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count. And Kanga is too busy looking after Roo, and Roo is too young and Tigger is too bouncy to be any help, so there’s really nobody but Me, when you come to look at it. I’ll go and see if there’s anything he wants doing, and then I’ll do it for him. It’s just the day for doing things.”

“Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder.”

He was deeply pained, he said. He had not told them, simply because he had supposed they would understand that they had to pay interest upon their debt, as a matter of course.

“I don’t feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I’ve got at present. You’re problem enough in all conscience. What’s to be done with you I don’t know. Matthew is a most ridiculous man.”

That was Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick, realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not bought a single instant’s forgetfulness with it.

“It is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Governor says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth!”

“Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!”

The point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world.

Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her.

All the little duties were faithfully done each day, and many of her sisters’ also, for they were forgetful, and the house seemed like a clock whose pendulum was gone a-visiting. When her heart got heavy with longings for Mother or fears for Father, she went away into a certain closet, hid her face in the folds of a dear old gown, and made her little moan and prayed her little prayer quietly by herself.

All were unconscious that this experience was a test of character, and when the first excitement was over, felt that they had done well and deserved praise. So they did, but their mistake was in ceasing to do well, and they learned this lesson through much anxiety and regret.

He was perfectly open and honorable about Meg, for he told us he loved her, but would earn a comfortable home before he asked her to marry him.

“There is a demand for whisky, but I think you and I do not care to sell it. If the respectable people knew what harm they did, they would not feel that the living was honest. They haf no right to put poison in the sugarplum, and let the small ones eat it.”

“You must take my place, Jo, and be everything to Father and Mother when I’m gone. They will turn to you, don’t fail them, and if it’s hard to work alone, remember that I don’t forget you, and that you’ll be happier in doing that than writing splendid books or seeing all the world, for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”

I will not have you left alone so long.

“You would have done well to think about them before you committed the assault,”

“Why, your excellency,” returned the landlord, chuckling and rubbing his hands with infinite complacency, “I think I may take upon myself to say I neglect nothing to deserve the support and patronage of the noble visitors to this poor hotel.”

“It is true, then,” he said, rather uttering his thoughts aloud than addressing his companion,—“it is true, then, that all our actions leave their traces—some sad, others bright—on our paths; it is true that every step in our lives is like the course of an insect on the sands;—it leaves its track! Alas, to many the path is traced by tears.”

“You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you not?”

“I do not intend to render another man responsible for the rigorous fate reserved for me.”

“Now, I beg of you, don’t go off your head. It’s a month now that you have been thinking of this marriage, and you must see that it throws some responsibility on me, for it was at my house you met this young Cavalcanti, whom I do not really know at all.”

“I got into a quarrel with a foreman—not my own boss, sir—and struck him.”

not merely the cost of keeping millions of men in idleness, of arming and equipping them for battle and parade, but the drain upon the vital energies of society by the war attitude and the war terror, the brutality and ignorance, the drunkenness, prostitution, and crime it entails, the industrial impotence and the moral deadness? Do you think that it would be too much to say that two hours of the working time of every efficient member of a community goes to feed the red fiend of war?”

“Well! Joe pursued, “somebody must keep the pot a-biling, Pip, or the pot won’t bile, don’t you know?”

“There is already lodged in my hands a sum of money amply sufficient for your suitable education and maintenance. You will please consider me your guardian. Oh!” for I was going to thank him, “I tell you at once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn’t render them. It is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance and necessity of at once entering on that advantage.”

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!”

“You made your own snares. I never made them.”

Gregor realised that it was out of the question to let the chief clerk go away in this mood if his position in the firm was not to be put into extreme danger. That was something his parents did not understand very well; over the years, they had become convinced that this job would provide for Gregor for his entire life, and besides, they had so much to worry about at present that they had lost sight of any thought for the future. Gregor, though, did think about the future. The chief clerk had to be held back, calmed down, convinced and finally won over; the future of Gregor and his family depended on it!

He really did want to open the door, really did want to let them see him and to speak with the chief clerk; the others were being so insistent, and he was curious to learn what they would say when they caught sight of him. If they were shocked then it would no longer be Gregor’s responsibility and he could rest. If, however, they took everything calmly he would still have no reason to be upset, and if he hurried he really could be at the station for eight o’clock.

Gregor converted his success at work straight into cash that he could lay on the table at home for the benefit of his astonished and delighted family. They had been good times and they had never come again, at least not with the same splendour, even though Gregor had later earned so much that he was in a position to bear the costs of the whole family, and did bear them. They had even got used to it, both Gregor and the family, they took the money with gratitude and he was glad to provide it, although there was no longer much warm affection given in return.

Their business misfortune had reduced the family to a state of total despair, and Gregor’s only concern at that time had been to arrange things so that they could all forget about it as quickly as possible.

Every minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. “Unhasting and unresting,” was his motto.

“Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it,” he said, in the word we linking himself with Anna.

They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self.

“I will call Mowgli and he shall say them—if he will. Come, Little Brother!”

“Well, sir, it is young; but he is as steady as a man, and is strong, and well grown, and though he has not had much experience in driving, he has a light firm hand and a quick eye, and he is very careful, and I am quite sure no horse of his will be ruined for want of having his feet and shoes looked after.”