Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'

There is a payment made by Nature to those who undergo hardships; it is that the lesser ones, at which people whose lives have been easier would complain, seem almost comfortable.

We are as solid as most truly false things are—a dance of particles in space. Only the things no one can touch are true, as you should know by now.

rather a sort of philosophical horror at the thought of a cosmos in which rude pictures of beasts and monsters had been painted with flaming suns.

I am, perhaps, mad in certain respects, but I know what those respects are, and such self-deceptions are no part of them.

and even a seemingly purposeless miracle is an inexhaustible source of hope, because it proves to us that since we do not understand everything, our defeats—so much more numerous than our few and empty victories—may be equally specious.

There was nothing of that here, no ideality; and yet the house was more perfect for all its imperfection, showing that human beings might live and love in such a remote spot without the ability to shape their habitat into a poem.

I felt the fear that has always come upon me on the many occasions of my life when some small incident has made me aware of an incipient insanity.

Now came the strangest happening I have to tell in all this already overlong tale; yet there was no sound or sight associated with it, no speaking beast or gigantic woman. It was only that as I heard him I felt a pressure against my breastbone, as I had felt it in Thrax when I knew I should be going north with the Claw. I remembered the girl in the

“You extend hope at one moment and snatch it away at the next.” “Not I, but history.