“... and he kills without fear, or anger, or hate, with regret even, simply because its necessary. That's rare, and it's rare still among the really first-rate. God help the enemy that finally frightens him or makes him mad.”

“He smiled, looking into the flames. "He used to sleep on the foot of my bed, bad breath and gas and all, and I even took him hunting.""It's odd to take a dog hunting?""Max? Yeah, sort of like taking along a brass band. He saved a lot of deer from death.”

“Mackenzies buried a rapist at a crossroads, with a spear thrust in the soil above; and they buried him living when they could, as a sacrifice to turn aside the anger of the Earth Powers.”

“Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people out of killing each other than into it?”

“God is the greatest of artists! How good of Him to give us this world, and the change to imitate Him by bettering it. Wryly: If only we did not mar it, and ourselves, so often!”

“Because those events are so real that they cast their shadow forward and backwards through all time, whenever men think of these matters at all. Even if they are mired in ignorace, they will see...fragments of the Truth, as men imprisoned in a cave see shadows cast by the sun. Likewise, all men derive their moral intuitions from God; how not? There is no other source, just as there is no other way to make a wheel than to make it round.”

“Stress" is mostly the result of not being allowed to kill some asshole you really want to slice and dice.”