“For with slight efforts how should we obtain great results? It is foolish even to desire it.”

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”

“So, friends, what method should we use? Hard to choose. I could torch them in their love nest or butcher them in their fragrant bed.”

“This town must learn,even against its will, how much it coststo scorn a God's mysteries and to be purged.So shall I vindicate my virgin motherand reveal myself to mortals as a God,the son of God.”

“Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.”

“When one with honeyed words but evil mindPersuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”

“We'll see how the sky catches fire. We'll see how she feeds the flames with her implacable hate.”