“If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.”

“It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.”

“There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them. ”

“I don't think you can very well give people as presents: they might not like it.”

“Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.”

“And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.”

“You know that eye-to-eye recognition, when two people look deeply into each other's pupils, and burrow to the soul? It usually comes before love. I mean the clear, deep, milk-eyed recognition expressed by the poet Donne. Their eyebeams twisted and did thread their eyes upon a double string. My father recognized that the Professor was a Troll, and the Professor recognized my father's recognition. Both of them knew that the Professor had eaten his wife. - The Troll”