"He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself."

"Like all such prophecies, it’s impressive only if not examined too closely."

"Outside the rain continued its cadenced and indifferent commentary."

"“Magistrate, a problem doesn’t cease to exist simply because you cease to consider it a problem.” ”Very often, Deputy Foutlif, it does.”"

"Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt."

"“Do you expect even dreams to unravel rationally, Kahl Balduin? Must each event have a precise, empirical cause?” “No, not if you’re narrating a dream. But if you claim, like the Pledgeson, that your visions and reality are the same thing, then, yes I expect consistency. I’m too old for pointless fairy tales.”"

"But each man who worships you sees only what he wishes to see rather than any mystery you may actually embody."

"The vitality of children is clean and honest. Their petty shortcomings derive, in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, from their effete elders’ pettiness. Contagion is a generational fact. But children can develop defenses against their elders’ spiritual scurvy simply because they’re new."

"Tiglathpileser was a human, it’s rumored. And Caligula. So were a whole host of twentieth-century tyrants. So presumably were the brain-dead idiots who turned the Earth into a treeless detention camp. Being human, I’m afraid, doesn’t automatically confer demigod status on anyone."

"“The True Word. Once every quarter, once every new-style month, I preach it.” “The True Word on what? Everybody’s got his own true word, you know.” “On how not to die, woman. The basis of every religion.” “No,” Zoe said. Not every one of them; just the ones that don’t know exactly what to do with the here-and-now.”"

"His foot always got caught in that wide, loose stirrup: his mouth."

"Don’t look for reason where it’s never been practiced."

"“Nature has its own logic, or so brother Peter tells us.” “The logic of chance—amoral and sometimes inaccurate.” “Well, Foutlif, we Earthmen are products of the ‘natural’ process; consequently, you shouldn’t be surprised to find us both of those things at times—amoral and inaccurate.”"

"Who but a madman would grapple with mountains?"

"Coercion is the tool of the desperate."

"What motivates you, then? Please don’t tell me altruism. I am not quite so gullible as that."

"I have thought a little about a telepathic community, and I have decided that it would most likely create either a thoroughly paranoiac or a thoroughly homogeneous unit of individuals. Complete suspicion and hostility in the one instance, total harmony and concord in the other. I do not like either alternative."

"God could hardly damn me for a coward, great cosmic exemplar of laissez-faire that he is."

"What was reprehensible in being fearful in the presence of the unknown?"

"Time, as it always does, passed."

"Here he was, not quite twenty-five years old, and he was going to have to make a new life for himself. A host of options lay before him, but, tipsy with Chablis and sunshine, at the moment all he could truly feel was a powerful sense of loss and uncertainty. All the routes to his previous self—the self that had tried to survive as a loner in Fort Walton Beach—were blocked, and he did not know which new path to choose. “Ciao,” he said again, and this time he was not talking to his mother."

"They had both changed in eight years, eroded or subtly augmented by the sweep of time’s river."

"Politics was a struggle for power, in its purest and simplest terms. If the voters were lucky, the winner would go on to improve their lot, because he would need their votes next time. Or because he enjoyed being popular. But issues were irrelevant. Always had been, probably. Once the age of mass communications arrived, presidents became entertainers, celebrities, if they were smart. FDR used his fireside chats; Kennedy had allowed spontaneous questions at press conferences, relying on wit and charm. Reagan knew from the films exactly how a president should behave, and he had exactly enough acting talent to bring it off. In that sense, he was the first modern president."

"Gambini was addicted to asking the sort of ultimate questions about which one could speculate endlessly with no fear of ever arriving at a solution."

"We’re talking about something we all want very much to find. And that automatically makes Ed’s conclusions suspect."

"It had occurred to Rimford, at about the time he approached fifty, that the chief drawback in contemplating the enormous gulfs of time and space that constitute the bricks and mortar of the cosmologist is that one acquires a dismaying perception of the handful of years allotted a human being."

"Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well."

"Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity."

"“I can’t imagine,” said Dupre, “a better way to unnerve people than to tell them there’s no cause for alarm.”"

"Politicians always seemed to be willing to sacrifice the general welfare to win votes."

"The stars are silent. Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow. There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void."

"“I suspect we would be wise,” he said without looking up, “to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow.”"

"A man is entitled to only one great passion in a lifetime. Whether it’s music or a profession or a woman, everything else pales in its afterglow. The searing shock so changes one’s chemistry that if the object is lost, the experience can never be repeated. Only anticlimax remains."

"He’d grown a mustache since Randall had last seen him. It was hard to understand why: He looked devious enough without it."

"How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?"

"The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge."

"Henry had been around long enough to know better than to disagree. But he forgot to implement."

"He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job."

"He objected on principle to the powerful."

"The problem is that too often the only people who can act don’t want change. Power doesn’t so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism."

"Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters."

"Maybe the universe doesn’t approve of places like New York."

"The impending collision out there somewhere in the great dark between a gas giant and a world very much like our own has some parallels to the eternal collision between religion and common sense. One is bloated and full of gas, and the other is measurable and solid. One engulfs everything around it, and the other simply provides a place to stand. One is a rogue destroyer that has come in out of the night, and the other is a warm well-lighted place vulnerable to the sainted mobs."

"The only people he knew of who would have leveled material advantage so that no one had any were of course those who had none to start with."