“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.”

“Naming is a difficult and timeconsuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.”

“To make of "the truth" a goddess amounts to turning the mere notion of something, namely the concept of the essence of truth, into a "personality.”

“Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be.”

“Earth was the shorthand name for the classroom studio, named Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Spirit. Megan thought the alchemical name was especially appropriate for the art of sculpting, since the medium utilized all of those things.”

“What in heaven's name was the real essence of this beauty? Was it the precision of nature with its physical laws, or was it nature's mercilessness, ceaselessly resisting man's understanding?”