“Forgery, being the weirdest form of creativity there is, like antiques, costs lives. Why is it that antiques demand sacrificial victims? Dunno, but if they don't get enough, forgery does. You want proof? Here it is: Once a faker's found out, he dies. Truly. It always happens.”

“Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that.”

“Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.”

“Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.”

“Antiquity is full of eulogies of another more remote antiquity.”

“Of course he had committed forgery;--of course he had committed robbery. That, indeed, was nothing, for he had been cheating and forging and stealing all his life.”