“I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of the State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”

“No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.”

“The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.”

“You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”

“The Duke would not pay for the works. He says that the Castle can never be taken. That is called hubris, Giacomo, the belief that you are never wrong. Believing you are never wrong is an error that afflicts great men. I have learned that to be right you must first be wrong many times. Without making errors--and learning from them--a man cannot find the truth.”

“In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.”