and I thought then (as I think now) how strange it was that they should have been so brave when they faced a horror, but such cowards when confronted by the palinode of fate.

enjoy all the authority and luxury it would bring, and most of all that pleasure in dealing justice and rewarding worth that is the final delight of power.

It is said that they who wander in darkness, and still more they who do so in a mist, merely scribe circles across the plain.

On this ship I was a child again, knowing no more of the world around me than a child does.

I began to walk, fearing a hundred things that would never harm me and utterly ignorant of the real risks I ran.

and I thought then (as I think now) how strange it was that they should have been so brave when they faced a horror, but such cowards when confronted by the palinode of fate.

understood at that moment how the Increate must feel about his creation, and I knew the sorrow he knows because the things he creates pass away. I think it may be a law binding even him—that is to say, a logical necessity—that nothing can be eternal in the future that is not rooted in eternity in the past, as he himself is.

It’s easy—very easy—to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place.”

“Then you must know that all are scourged alike. And yet the nearer to success, the worse the pain each feels. That is a law we cannot change.”