“One cannot look too closely at and weigh in too golden scales the acts of men hot in their political excitement.”

“There was a smell in the air now. The hot, close, frightening small of mob; mob excited, hungry, dreaming blood and death. The primitive in Stark knew that sweaty acridity all too well.”

“There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.”

“People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.”

“A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.”

“No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of-ssso much compressed wisdom.”

“India is for me a difficult country. It isn’t my home and cannot be my home; and yet I cannot reject it or be indifferent to it; I cannot travel only for the sights. I am at once too close and too far.”

“They looked like men. That was the trouble with devils, Carolyn thought. Too often they looked like men.”

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”

“She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.”