“They had made history well enough, Bolitho thought grimly, but it had ended in bloody disaster.”

“History is made up of people recovering from the last disaster.”

“Poor old Spotty Muldoon. He thought of splitting the atom the other day. If only he could have had the idea about thirty years ago, he'd have made a bloody fortune.”

“Well then you thought that the end was in sight
And then you thought there was nothing to fight
But you had opened your heart with your mind
Oooh here comes one.”

“If they had made that longer six-cylinder crankshaft strong enough and had supported it well enough, they would have obtained the smoother action they talks about in their advertisements. But they could not do that, and those early sixes had a very undesirable period vibration at certain speeds. That vibration more than offset the gain that they would have realized, if they had treated the crankshaft properly.”

“These bygone workmen did not serve, they worked. They had an absolute honor, which is honor proper. A chair rung had to be well made. That was an understood thing. That was the first thing. It wasn’t that the chair rung had to be well made for the salary or on account of the salary. It wasn’t that it was well made for the boss, nor for connoisseurs, nor for the boss’ clients. It had to be well made itself, in itself, for itself, in its very self. A tradition coming, springing from deep within the race, a history, an absolute, an honor, demanded that this chair rung be well made. Every part of the chair which could not be seen was just as perfectly made as the parts which could be seen. This was the selfsame principle of cathedrals. … There was no question of being seen or of not being seen. It was the innate being of work which needed to be well done.”

“How many times had those awful words - "I know what I'm doing" - been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster?”

“For him, life was a coin that had disaster on one side and waiting for disaster on the other”

“Strange, i thought i knew you well, thought i had read the sky, thought i had seen a change in your eyes.”

“Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that.
“Well, there is now,” she said aloud, and again, louder: “There is now!””