I mean Jesus never asked a man to do a damn thing that Jesus didn’t do.

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking...

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate...

He prayed for the recovery of that inward privacy which the purpose of his vigil demanded that he seek: a clean parchment of the spirit whereon the words of a summons might be written in...

Fire, loveliest of the four elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell. While it burned adoringly in the core of the Temple, it had also scorched the life from a city,...

The visitor shrugged. “Like euthanasia? I’m sorry, Father, I feel that the laws of a society are what make something a crime or not a crime. I’m aware that you don’t agree. And there can...

You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.

When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.

That’s where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.

What’s to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder’s been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there’s no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier....

They don’t think up questions like that on the basis of what might be true; they concoct the questions on the basis of what might be sensational if it just happened to be true.

Perhaps in his loneliness he had acquired the silent conviction that he was ‘the last’, the one, the only. And, being the last, he ceased to be Benjamin, becoming Israel. And upon his heart had...

There were spaceships again in that century, an dthe ships were manned by fuzzy impossibilities that walked on two legs and sprouted tufts of hair in unlikely anatomical regions. They were a garrulous kind. They...

The visage of Lucifer mushroomed into hideousness above the cloudbank, rising slowly like some titan climbing to its feet after ages of imprisonment in the Earth.

But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it...

Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.

It is not what you meant to say, but it is what your saying meant.

But you’ve always used words so wordily in crafty defense of your Trinity, although He never needed such defense before you got Him from me as a Unity.

As Brother Francis readily admitted, his mastery of pre-Deluge English was far from masterful yet. The way nouns could sometimes modify other nouns in that tongue had always been one of his weak points. In...

You heard him say it? ‘Pain’s the only evil I know about.’ You heard that?”The monk nodded solemnly.”And that society is the only thing that determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?””Yes.””Dearest...

[…]How can a great civilization have destroyed itself so completely?””Perhaps,”said Apollo, “by being materially great and materially wise and nothing else.

Steel screams when it’s forged, it gasps when it’s quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son. Take half an hour to think? A drink of water? A...