“Faith, thought O’LiamRoe. And not a decent creature among them thought to say that the only rule in it is for a man to have a fine, steady seat for an elephant.”

“Steadiness of faith, was, in the long run, as illuminating and essential as sophistication of thought.”

“I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.”

“...'I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.''Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.”

“We say that we are rulers of this country, but we do not make a rule of law. We say that we command these people, but we do not lead them to peace or prosperity. We,their own lords, quarrel among ourselves, and bring death to their door, as if our opinions and thoughts and dreams are worth far more than their safety and health and children.”

“About halfway through I broke down crying, which I hadn't expected. I was a little ashamed, but only a little;it was her, you see, and she never taxed me with the times that I slipped from the way I thought a man should be...the way I thought I should be, at any rate. A man with a good wife is the luckiest of God's creatures, and one without must be among the most miserable, I think, the only true blessing of their lives that they don't know how poorly off they are.”