Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something.”The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement....

Odd, don’t you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men...

The evil done by men of goodwill is the worst of all … We have done terrible things, for the best of reasons, and that makes it worse.

Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies — the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe....

He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that … being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it...

He who profits by villainy, has perpetrated it.

Every cataclysm is welcomed by somebody; there is always someone to rejoice at disaster and see in it the prospect of a new beginning and a better world.

His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political.

[Men] prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth [to the enlightenment of their souls]. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth.””No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all....

He (William Cort) had some desire to be successful, but it did not burn so strongly in him that he was prepared to overcome his character to achieve it.

[H]e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how...

Politics bores you?” Bronsen said.Julien smiled. “It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven’t tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars,...

Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can...

She was looking for something I could never give her.” Again his dark eyes bored into Julia’s mind. “You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don’t think you will...

Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman,...

Diplomacy and virtue do not make easy companions.

[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for...

Father is a school manqué … He always wanted to write books. But he became rich instead, so is not allowed.

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make...

This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn’t know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you.”He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt,...

She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that...

Do you wish to speak in Provençal, French, or Latin? They are all I can manage, I’m afraid.””Any will do,” the rabbi replied in Provençal.”Splendid. Latin it is,” said Pope Clement.

In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part...

A hundred francs! Oh, dear me! It is worth millions of francs, my child. But my — dealer — here tells me that in fact a picture is worth only what someone will give for...

Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is...

Although of course I am aware that it changes colour in a jar. But we know why, surely? The heavier melancholic elements in the blood sink, making the top lighter and the bottom darker.””Not so,”...

Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed.

I learned that I’ have to be detached if I was ever to achieve anything at all.

Philosophy cannot be extinguished, though men will try … The spirit seeks the light, that is its nature. It wishes to return to its origin, and must forever try to reach enlightenment.

My Lord Bacon, in his Novum Organum, discusses this point, and investigates with his habitual brilliance the various categories of evidence, and finds them all flawed. None conveys certainty, he decides, a conclusion which (one...

Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their...

For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness...

Manlius … took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world,...

[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. “The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned...

The devil himself can become beauty, so we are told, to corrupt mankind.”(Marco)

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished...

I have brought peace to this land, and security,” he began.”And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand...

Civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark.

And here was the moment. The end of it all, for civilization was merely another name for friendship, and friendship was coming to an end.

For, in his opinion, to study nature was a form of worship.