"The Emperor, the consensus seems to be, was an excessively suspicious man. Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangerous as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty."

". . . even though the skin-spies were exposed relatively early in the course of the Holy War, most believed the Cishaurim rather than the Consult to be responsible. This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late."

"Ignorance is Trust."

"Duty measures the distance between the animal and the divine."

"See your enemies content and your lovers melancholy."

"No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences. No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions. Not even death."

"Why must I conquer you ask? War makes clear. Life or Death. Freedom or Bondage. War strikes the sediment from the water of life."

"One sorcerer, the ancients say, is worth a thousand warriors in battle and ten thousand sinners in Hell."

"If one doubts that passion and unreason govern the fate of nations, one need only look to meetings between the Great. Kings and emperors are unused to treating with equals, and are often excessively relieved or repelled as a result. The Nilnameshi have a saying, “When princes meet, they find either brothers or themselves,” which is to say, peace or war."

"What is practicality but one moment betrayed for the next?"

"Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human."

"How does one learn innocence? How does one teach ignorance? For to be them is to know them not. And yet they are the immovable point from which the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly. They are the Absolute."

"Though you lose your soul, you shall win the world."

"Men are forever pointing at others, which is why I always follow the knuckle and not the nail."

"It is the difference in knowledge that commands respect. This is why the true test of every student lies in the humiliation of his master."

"The children here play with bones instead of sticks, and whenever I see them, I cannot but wonder whether the humeri they brandish are faithful or heathen."

"In terror, all men throw up their hands and turn aside their faces. Remember, Tratta, always preserve the face! For that is where you are."

"What vengeance is this? That he should slumber while I endure? Blood douses no hatred, cleanses no sin. Like seed, it spills of its own volition, and leaves naught but sorrow in its wake."

"To piss across water is to piss across your reflection."

"The Poet will yield up his stylus only when the Geometer can explain how Life can at once be a point and a line. How can all time, all creation, come to the now? Make no mistake: this moment, the instant of this very breath, is the frail thread from which all creation hangs. That men dare to be thoughtless ..."

"... and my soldiers, they say, make idols of their swords. But does not the sword make certain? Does not the sword make plain? Does not the sword compel kindness from those who kneel in its shadow? I need no other God."

"We will give over all of them, slain, to the Children of Eänna; you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire. You shall bathe your feet in the blood of the wicked."

"... for the sin of the idolator is not that he worships stone, but that he worships one stone over others."

"The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wise think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite. It is enough, they say, that the God thinks them."

"Bring he who has spoken prophecy to the judgement of the priests, and if his prophecy is judged true, acclaim him, for he is clean, and if his prophecy is judged false, bind him to the corpse of his wife, and hang him one cubit above the earth, for he is unclean, an anathema unto the Gods."

"My heart shrivels even as my intellect bristles. Reasons—I find myself desperate for reasons. Sometimes I think every word written is written for shame."

"For men, no circle is ever closed. We walk ever in spirals."

"Everything is concealed always. Nothing is more trite than a mask."

"They strike down the weak and call it justice. They ungird their loins and call it reparation. They bark like dogs and call it reason."

"All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers."

"In pursuing yonder what they have lost, they encounter only the nothing they have. In order not to lose touch with the everyday dreariness in which, as irremediable realists, they are at home, they adapt the meaning they revel in to the meaninglessness they flee. The worthless magic is nothing other than the worthless existence it lights up."

"What is the meaning of a deluded life?"

"Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?"

"Of course we make crutches of one another. Why else would we crawl when we lose our lovers?"

"If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance."

"I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness."

"Like a stern father, war shames men into hating their childhood games."

"When others speak, I hear naught but the squawking of parrots. But when I speak, it always seems to be the first time. Each man is the rule of the other, no matter how mad or vain."

"To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife."

"I returned from that campaign a far different man, or so my mother continuously complained. “Now only the dead,” she would tell me, “can hope to match your gaze.”"

"It is far better to outwit Truth than to apprehend it."

"Yet the soul lingers like a second smell. A sailor wrecked at sea, it clings. Lest it sink and drown in Hell."

"Things holy ... became mere versions of things unholy ... as though the words "holy" and "unholy" were as easily exchanged as seats at a gaming table. And the recent simply became a more tawdry repetition of the ancient."

"A tiny robot is kicking this guy's ass, if anyone wants to watch. Oh, and then the band's gonna play. (Vol.5, 26,14,6)"

"Mrs. Chau: You are seventeen year old! Time to get interested in boy! (Vol.1, intro, page 9, panel 2)"

"Back off, bitch, it's my birthday. (Vol.4, 19,2,5)"

"You stole him with your advanced American slut technology! You're not nice! (Vol.5, 27,20,3)"

"Stephen... you know how, when a baby is first born, it just cries at the sheer horror of being alive? (Vol.3, 14,11,3)"

"I've kissed the lips that kissed YOU!!! (Vol.3, 12,8,4)"

"Stephen Stills, the talent: Scott, if your life had a face, I would punch it in the balls. Seriously.(Vol.4, 24,6,7)"