“The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.”

“But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.”

“For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead...We're nothing more than dust jackets for books...so many pages to a person...”

“surdas destroyed his eyes believing that once his sight was gone, desire and passion would never arise in him again. But desire doesn't arise in the eyes, it arises out of the mind. No passion will ever be finished in this way-even if one destroys one's own eyes-”

“...the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good.”

“The slightest nudge can send a fruit pyramid collapsing into ruin. Perhaps this is why there is so little ancient architecture and art left in the world. Perhaps ancient fat people bumped into buildings and statues and made them fall. Perhaps this is the real reason Rome fell”