Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (…)‘And?’‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension...

I understand,” she said. It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration.

Better a live dog than a dead lion.

t was once famously said that it is as well that wars are so ruinously expensive, else we would never stop fighting them. However well said, it seems also to be endlessly forgotten that, while there may be just wars and unjust wars, there are never any cheap wars.

Hypocrites,’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.

Why you?- (…) I’m the best.- Modest of you.- I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it.

Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage—but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life...

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

… If the dead can come back to this earth and move unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or...

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims – the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is that nobody really possesses a great kind of power for long. Those who have it on loan from Fate count on it too much and are themselves...

The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills...

Get on your feet or die.

I am bound to her with cables that not even God can break. One day, if there is a soft breeze on her cheek, it may be my breath; one night, if the cool wind plays with her hair, it may be my shadow passing by.” And with this terrible threat he faced forward and...

You’re the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.’ ‘I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I’d be taller.

…the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone.

…and what is a good weapon but a good idea made murderous flesh?

The battle had been as hideous as you might expect between one side who were simply not afraid to die and another who regarded death as merely a door to the eternal life.

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

(Arbell)The ungrateful gorgeous bitch.

It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.

…his soul (was) ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy and adoration — there was the sound there too of anger and resentment. She would not look at him because she did not want to be in his presence. She hated him and he (how could...

…the older I get, the more I believe that if love is to be judged by most of its visible effects, it looks more like hatred than friendship.

Where have you come from boy?’He looked at her again.’From hell, to take you away in the night and eat you.

Many are called, few are chosen.

In such a beast as this…” (he means the army)”…it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it...

…this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered in dreadful fires of fear and pain. How could she be with him for long? A secret part of Arbell had been searching for some time for a way to leave her lover—although she was unaware of this, it...

How can I know for sure if it’s my son speaking and not you?””You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.