“Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.”

“He had seen how people came a cropper by giving way to impulse. It was to his judiciousness, at every turn, that he owed the fact that nothing terrible had ever happened to him.”

“Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.”

“He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.”

“I know that all the magic kisses in the world probably couldn't have helped him today. But I would do anything to have been able to give him one.”

“And why did everyone persist in thinking the mute was exactly as they wanted him to be--when most likely it was all a very queer mistake?... In the battling tumult of voices he alone was silent.”