“I fell,” he repeated for the hundredth time. “But you didn’t fall very far,” Mary Sarojini now said. “No, I didn’t fall very far,” he agreed. “So what’s all the fuss about?” the child inquired.”

“Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good.”

“Fortunate boys!' said the Controller. 'No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy - to preserve you, so as far as that is possible, from having emotions at all.' 'Ford's in his flivver,' murmured the DHC. 'All's well with the world.”

“...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.”

“All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all. When it does anything more - when it tries too hard, for example, when it worries, when it becomes apprehensive about the future - it lowers the effectiveness of those forces and may even cause the devitalized body to fall ill. In my present state, awareness was not referred to as ego; it was, so to speak, on its own.”

“Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.”

“What I'm going to tell you now," he said, "may sound incredible. But then, when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about the past DO seem incredible.”