“Society is helpless without its champion," said Dr. Johns. "The more it itself employs its own will toward order, the more it is removed from the soil in which it roots; its freedom of will becomes a source of transgression against its deep-rooted instincts. In its dilemma it needs a crucifixion, someone to die in the name of chaos, a sacrifice of atonement to protect it against the primitive powers that threaten to falsify its order.”

“Man acquired a soul and he must fight with all the powers at his disposal to protect that soul against the monster in his dark past.”

“Protection, therefore, against tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.”

“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, itpromptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedomthat it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it,obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that thispeople has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”

“Inspiration can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be quite fickle ... If you want to be able to call on inspiration reliably then you need to work on it with regularity. Someone once said that if you only go out with a bucket to collect water when it's raining, sometimes you'll get water. But if you go out with your bucket every day, even when it's not raining, sometimes you'll catch unexpected rain. And also, a strange thing may happen: that the very act of going out with your bucket may actually provoke such rain.”

“The shadow had followed behind them, clinging to their steps; and the two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down, trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great bronze gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky.”

“Its roots emerged forcefully from the earth like the Great Wall and extended at least ten feet toward the house, demanding to be seen from beneath the soil.”