“God's hand is strange to us. He cares nothing for the moment, nothing for the feeble ambitions of men and women. He sees the road that flows onward forever.”

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 76-77
Context: In science he could see nothing useful to mankind.... He advised the scientist the surgeon the teacher and the artist to go and live as the poor live and try to minister to their actual wants instead of counting up insects chemically analyzing the contents of the Milky Way painting water nymphs and historical pictures writing novels and composing symphonies.

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 55

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Source: Dracula

Thorold, in Ch. 2 : The Witches
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)
Context: Lord Asriel is just a man, with human power, no more than that. But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.

As quoted in Physically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations on Physics and Astronomy (1997), p. 101.

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 13; Unsourced variant: Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Context: Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you'll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

An unnamed goddess
The Queen of Attolia (2000)

Source: Staff Reporter, "Mangalampalli can't wait to come home".