To acknowledge a pattern of repeatedly breaking, of in fact never failing to break, would have meant acknowledging our powerlessness, admitting we could never act righteously.
There is this idea that if you change your mind that means you're not being consistent and you're not being like integrity, like or whatever the thing is people used to describe this.
I remember all, even words that were lightly uttered, —words by which a man less conscientious than I, with a heart less youthful and less upright, would scarcely feel himself bound.
After King Wu of Zhou the throne was handed down through eight generations until it reached King Yi, a man who was neither sober nor correct, and the feudal lords gradually became strong.
One holds every phrase, every scene to the light as one reads—for Nature seems, very oddly, to have provided us with an inner light by which to judge of the novelist's integrity or disintegrity.
I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, " What have I done" ? Each pursues their own course like a horse charging into battle.