“Men can do nothing without the make-believe of abeginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to startwith a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars'unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that timeis at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always beenunderstood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appearsthat her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science,too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit intobillions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets offin medias res. No retrospect will take us to the truebeginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it isbut a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our storysets out.”

“Whether you believe in God or are an atheist, you cannot deny that the empirical facts of science have nothing to do with whether or not freedom and good are real or worth destroying ourselves for. Meaning must come from the individual in touch with his or her own soul. To discover how to recover our sanity and freedom, we must know ourselves from within.”

“Why was it that when noughts committed criminal acts, the fact that they were noughts was always pointed out? The banker was a Cross. The newsreader didn't even mention it.”

“Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her? Never mind physically but betray her in his mind, in the very "poetry of his soul". Well, it's not easy but men do it all the time.”

“But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love. For the good of mankind, and for the honor and glory of God.”

“She was his north star, the fixed point round which his world turned. For as long as his heart beat, or hers, he believed they would always share a destiny.”