John Christopher

“Morality, for all the conditioning to which the human mind has been and is subjected, is always a personal choice in the last analysis.”

“People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen, all the vast multitudes of them, but you can only love those you know — and that with difficulty.”

“And a leader has to command confidence, and consent.”

“There are times when thinking about something is the worst possible policy.”

“As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.”

“What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was--cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten--as long as it was something they'd come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren't really alive.”

“Have a drink, and try to relax. All right, have another drink. There are times when getting drunk's not a bad idea.”

“I wanted to ask which war---the Boer or the Crimean? It was amazing how old people could talk about The War, as though that meant something.”

“The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses.”

“What tricks the mind is what the mind is glad to be tricked by.”

“And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.”

“The order should not have been given,' she said. 'It was not done for the city but for your private ends.'I shook my head. 'There is no difference.'You believe that?'A Prince must, or he is no Prince.”

“You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.”

“In the realm of dream and imagination all men are equal.”

“A man faced death, but when death drew back forgot it until the next time.”

“What men do matters more than what they know.”

“Truth does not surround itself with lies.”

“It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.”

“There is always something to lose. But maybe more to gain.”

“I think before I act---and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.”

“He said, speaking more to himself than to me: 'It was knowledge I sought. Knowledge which is clean and pure, far above the cheating and deceiving in which most men spend their lives.'And do you not find it,' I asked, 'this knowledge which you prize?'In part,' he said. 'I find other things, too. Things I do not desire but must accept. There is still cheating and deceiving.”

“Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it.”

“We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies.”

“Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.”

“Then I went to the windows and pulled them open. The rain had stopped and the night was very still, black except for the glow behind the western hills that marked the Burning Lands. A dog barked far off, once and no more.”

“Everyone recognized she was without malice and therefore she provoked none.”

“There are disappointments in all men's lives, even those who have achieved their ambition, and there are compensations.”

“I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.”

“A general does not use the same troops over and over again.”

“It is hard to be defensive toward a danger which you have never imagined existed.”

“Some people are oil and water.”

“His anger was as great as mine, but hot where mine was cold.”

“To voice doubts was unthinkable, but that did not means that doubts did not exist.”

“Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling.”

“We all have to learn to live with our losses, and to use our regrets to spur us on in the future.”

“One enjoys friendship most when times are good, when the sun shines and the world is kind. But it is the sharing of adversity that knits men together.”

“More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world.”

“He was sometimes stern but more often kindly---just according to his lights, but he saw the world in simple shades of black and white, and found it hard to be patient with things that struck him as foolishness.”

“Having achieved what I thought was an ultimate ambition, I found, as I think is often the case, that there remained something more.”