“How strange it must be, thought Tortoise looking out to sea, to have no edge to one's world. We have a beach; we know the shape of our island and just how far we can go. But Turtle can swim away in any direction and keep going -- her world has no limits, no ending. She can, if she chooses, swim on forever and ever and ever.”

“There are times when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord's hands; and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking that we alone are personally responsible for building a better world. In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord. It is God who governs the world, not we. We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength. To do all we can with what strength we have, however, is the task which keeps the good servant of Jesus Christ always at work: “The love of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14).”

“If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.”

“But in life people come and go. We don't always have control over it. But we can control how we respond. We can keep going, keep living the best we can. We can love the people we have instead of shutting them out. We can do our best to get to know them in the time we have.”

“Other mages have an odd attitude towards diviners. By the standards of, say, elemental mages. We can't gate, we can't attack, we can't shield, and when it comes to physical action our magic is about as useful as a bicycle in a trampolining contest. But we can see anywhere and learn anything and there's no secret we can't uncover if we try hard enough. So when an elemental mage looks at a diviner, the elemental mage knows he could take him in a straight fight with no more effort that it would take to tie his shoes. On the other hand, the elemental mage also knows that the diviner could find out every one of his most dirty and embarrassing secrets and, should hi feel like it, post copies of them to everyone the elemental mage has ever met. It creates a mixture of uneasiness and contempt that doesn't encourage warm feelings. There's a reason most of my friends aren't mages.”

“We have no choice. You need to go one direction and I need to go another. But we'll take the love with us. No one can ever take that away.”

“It is perhaps permissible here to draw attention to a distinction made by Martin Heidegger, who speaks of the duality of calculating and reflective thought. Both modes of thought are legitimate and necessary, but for this very reason neither can be absorbed in the other. There must therefore be both: calculating thought, which is concerned with "makability," and reflective thought, which is concerned with meaning. And one cannot deny that the Freiburg philosopher has a good deal of justification for expressing the fear that in an age in which calculating thought is celebrating the most amazing triumphs man is nevertheless threatened, perhaps more than ever before by thoughtlessness, by the flight from thought. By thinking only of the practicable, of what can be made, he is in danger of forgetting to reflect on himself and on the meaning of his existence. Of course, this temptation is present in every age. Thus in the thirteenth century the great Franciscan theologian Bonaventure felt obliged to reproach his colleagues of the philosophical faculty at Paris with having learned how to measure the world but having forgotten how to measure themselves.”