“What really matters is what you do with what you have.”

“Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.”

“No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?”

“What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting?”

“I wonder," said Graham.Ostrog stared.Must the world go this way?" said Graham, with his emotions at the speaking point. "Must it indeedgo in this way? Have all our hopes been vain?"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"I came from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"Well, — but you are the chief tyrant."Graham shook his head.”

“What on earth would a man do with himself, if something did not stand in his way?”

“Aren't we all agreed about those things--in theory?'In theory, yes,' said Bobby. 'But not in reality. If every one really wanted to abolish the difference of rich and poor it would be as easy as pie to find a way. There's always a way to everything if you want to do it enough. But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but wanting to have no rich and poor any more isn't real wanting; it is just a matter of pious sentiment. And so it is about war. We don't want to be poor and we don't want to be hurt or worried by war, but that's not wanting to end those things.”