Paul Hoffman

...this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered in dreadful fires of fear and pain. How could she be with him for long? A secret part of Arbell had been searching for some time for a way to leave her lover__lthough she was unaware of this, it is only fair to record. And so as Cale waited for her to save him while he worked out a way of saving her, she had already chosen the bitter but reasonable path of the good, of the many over the one...

... If the dead can come back to this earth and move unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night__midst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours__lways, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or if the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog__ dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound; from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child.(...)And who will exterminate him who exterminates all others?

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.

Do you have any idea how mad you sound?___ndeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity._ (...)__nd?___hen I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust.

...the older I get, the more I believe that if love is to be judged by most of its visible effects, it looks more like hatred than friendship.

t was once famously said that it is as well that wars are so ruinously expensive, else we would never stop fighting them. However well said, it seems also to be endlessly forgotten that, while there may be just wars and unjust wars, there are never any cheap wars.

It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger _ how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.

I have a message for your daughter,_ said Cale. __ am bound to her with cables that not even God can break. One day, if there is a soft breeze on her cheek, it may be my breath; one night, if the cool wind plays with her hair, it may be my shadow passing by._ And with this terrible threat he faced forward and the procession started once more. In less than a minute they were gone. In her shady room Arbell Swan-Neck stood white and cold as alabaster.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims - the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is that nobody really possesses a great kind of power for long. Those who have it on loan from Fate count on it too much and are themselves destroyed.

How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?""You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.

The battle had been as hideous as you might expect between one side who were simply not afraid to die and another who regarded death as merely a door to the eternal life.

When he said someone had 'died", Erd_s meant that that the person had stopped doing mathematics. When he said someone had "left", the person had died.

Mathematician need only peace of mind and occasionally, paper and pencil.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims__he second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.