what was that place at which he stopped and refrained.
Leaves us as he often does with a thought-provoking statement. Don't we all reach a place where we realize where we stand before God and make a decision to stop and refrain? But for the grace of God, there may not be such a place.
though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with tools of pain.
Interesting way of saying this.
“I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that I shan't know the difference between right and wrong.”
Here are the terrible words. Of course, he has already claimed a type of relative morality, but even he knows certain things to be truly wrong, yet here he is considering it.
And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget.
Makes sure we don't miss the most important words.
“Only what you call evil I call good.”
Relative morality
devil-worshipper
Devilish imagery comes to expression.
He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me despair of his soul.
What kind of "fairness of the intellect" would cause him to despair of one's soul?
That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues.
Links color of red with virtue in this paragraph, much like he does with the color white in "A Piece of Chalk."
fifth of November
Gunpowder Plot of 1605, also called Bonfire Night (a propos to the sparks of the fire).
empted in a wilderness;
Definitely devilish imagery (Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew 4).
His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit.
Devilish imagery.
heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes.
Ideas have consequences? Ideas are more damaging than acts because an act could be a one-time sin, but an idea begets repeated sin?
The man asked me abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said it, I really had not known that I was; but the moment he had said it I knew it to be literally true.
Others often seem to know us better than we know ourselves.
Heaven
Heaven, St. Paul's Cathedral, archangel. These two paragraph have a lot of religious imagery; and colors.
And I shall never forget the half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first and the last time.
Continues the sense of foreboding. We seem now to know with whom the conversation that was so terrible happens.
condescended to his company
Since this seems so common, why do we condescend to our company? What is appealing about this?
The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot.
Same. Is this true? I generally find that in a group of 5-6 at least that 1-2 are this way. I wonder if in a group of 3 that is still true. It makes me think of how Augustine repeatedly says in the Confessions that he would not have stolen fruit from the pear tree if he had been alone. The things we will do with others that we won't do alone is an interesting phenomenon, and may help explain why someone who is not a cad or an idiot will act like one in a group.
The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and women; that women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.
Fascinating thought. Is this true?
I value that time, in short, because it made me acquainted with a good representative number of blackguards.
Interesting thing to be thankful for. But I do often reflect on the fact that I work sixty hours a week at jobs in ministry meaning most of my time is spent with believers (or at least professing believers). It is hard to carve out time and a place for time with unbelievers.
People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all.
This is probably true at a lot of schools, including S of O. Those who want to learn do too much work; the rest, well, none at all.
there is one sentence in it for which I can answer absolutely and word for word. It was a sentence so awful that I could not forget it if I would. It was the last sentence spoken; and it was not spoken to me.
Continues the sense of foreboding. We are looking for one line, the last line spoken, that causes such terror for him. And even after talking about the conversation that was so terrible, it turns out the last sentence, the one so terrible, wasn't even spoken to him.
But that quiet conversation was by far the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life.
I love the general sense of foreboding. What conversation could be so meaningful that it was the most terrible thing that has happened in his life?
Things that really happened have been mentioned, such as meeting President Kruger or being thrown out of a cab.
I love that he mentions articles that he actually wrote.