“You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.”

“It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.”

“He said, speaking more to himself than to me: 'It was knowledge I sought. Knowledge which is clean and pure, far above the cheating and deceiving in which most men spend their lives.'And do you not find it,' I asked, 'this knowledge which you prize?'In part,' he said. 'I find other things, too. Things I do not desire but must accept. There is still cheating and deceiving.”

“What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was--cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten--as long as it was something they'd come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren't really alive.”

“Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling.”

“The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses.”

“Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it.”