“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it, and die for it. The Church would make money from it, it would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror in men's hearts. So he would do what Planchard had said he would do. 'Hurl it into the deepest sea,' he quoted the old Abbott, 'down among the monsters, and tell no one.'”

“Sokolov put the odds at 100 percent that Peter would, sooner or later, do something stupid and cause enormous trouble. Peter would do this because he believed he was clever and because he thought only of himself. It would be safer to take him out and shoot him now, but disposing of the body would be difficult and the shock of it would probably disturb the equilibrium of Zula.”

“He expects nothing, she thought, because he's never had anything. And nothing was expected of him. He was free in a way she never would be.”

“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”

“Do ye not understand?"he said, in near desparation. "I would lay the world at your feet, Claire-and I have nothing to give ye!"
He honestly thought it mattered.”

“He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn’t stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good, he told himself. It would be a senseless thing to get it; more than that, a senseless attitude. The least that man could do, he thought, was to meet these creatures of another world with clean and empty hands.”

“Someday, he thought, I would like to meet a monster who looked like a monster.”

“And I rejoiced to think that I has found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the earth is flat or round; and then he would further explain that this position was the best, and I should be satisfied… and not want any other sort of cause. And I thought that I would then go and ask him about the sun and moon and stars, and he would explain to me their comparative swiftness, and their returnings and various states, and how their several affections, active and passive, were all for the best. For I could not imagine that when he spoke of mind as the disposer of them, he would give any other account of their being as they are, except that this was best; and I thought when he had explained to me in detail the cause of each and the cause of all, he would go on to explain to me what was best for me and what was best for all. …I seized the books and read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to know the better and the worse.”

“The doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future.”

“Lamachus chid a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, "Sir," said he, "in war there is no room for a second miscarriage." Said one to Iphicrates, "What are ye afraid of?" "Of all speeches," said he, "none is so dishonourable for a general as ‘I should not have thought of it.'"”